Berlin Noir: March Violets, The Pale Criminal, A German Requiem

Ex-Policeman Bernie Gunther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison.

Set before, during and after Hitler’s rise to power, the three novels contained in Berlin Noir: March Violets; The Pale Criminal; A German Requiem took the private investigator archetype perfected by Hammett and Chandler and dragged them to all-new depths of morbid compromise, all the while delivering eye-watering one-liners and observations on the human condition

When we first meet Bernie in March Violets he is 38 years old, a veteran of the Turkish Front (like Hitler, winning a Second-Class Iron Cross, but, as he says, “most of the first-class medals were awarded to men in cemeteries”), and an ex-policeman. He's also a private eye, specializing in missing persons. He's a very busy man. Because this is Berlin 1936, and people have a nasty habit of disappearing in Hitler's capital.

Read an exclusive introduction to book twelve in the Gunther series, Prussian Blue, by Philip Kerr.

The thirteenth Bernie Gunther series novel, Greeks Bearing Gifts, is published April 2018 and is available to order now.