Last drinks at the Hotel Adlon

Every book in the Bernie Gunther series rated

I just finished the last novel in Philip Kerr’s 14 book long Bernie Gunther series, If the Dead Not Rise (2009), the sixth entry. I finished it in Berlin, where I am currently living, which felt fitting.

The same day, I visited the very powerful Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in city’s Mitte district and went for a walk to visit the nearby famous Hotel Adlon Kempinski. The Adlon will be familiar to anyone who has read the series, as the place where Gunther worked as the house detective, after being forced to leave the Berlin police force when the Nazis took power in 1933.

I would call If the Dead Not Rise a middle entry in the series. It is not one of the best, but it is pretty solid. As is often the case, the plot moves Gunther between pre-war Germany and his life on the run after the war. Part one starts out with the apparently small beer theft of an antique box from a shady American guest staying at the Adlon, before quickly pivoting into a tale involving large scale corruption around construction contracts in the lead-up to the Nazis hosting the 1936 Olympics. In the second half, Gunther is cooling his heels in pre-revolutionary Havana, where he becomes entangled in various complications arising from the reappearance of the characters from the pre-war plot of the book. There is a lot of ruminating about the nature of totalitarian regimes, what makes a successful revolution, Gunther’s ongoing guilt about his activities during the war, and the usual suspension of disbelief required to deal with the fact that Gunther bumps into so many historical figures and events. Like I say, solid but not spectacular.

I have written before about the aspect of Kerr’s Gunther books I like so much: what exactly does it mean to investigate a serious crime and bring the perpetrators to justice when one is operating in a milieu of civil strife and political dictatorship and the notion of the law is largely ignored or, at the very least, heavily malleable by the powers that be. Pretty much every Gunther book takes this as its narrative starting point and pushes it as far as it can. And, for the most part, it works.

Anyway, now that I have read the entire series, I want to briefly do a spoiler free look at the best, middle and poorest entries of the series. I didn’t read them in order and, if you have not worked your way through them yet, you don’t really need to either. That said, neither would it harm your reading experience to start at the beginning and proceed from there.

The best books in the series:

March Violets (1989), set in 1936, The Pale Criminal (1990), set in 1938, and A German Requiem (1991) set after the war in 1947-1948. Absolutely amazing, with the added benefit that they not only pack a punch, but they do so with a relatively short page count, as opposed to some of the later books that just blow out way too much in terms of length.

The One from the Other (2006)

Gunther working as PI in 1949 Munich and dealing the guilt/trauma of what he got up to working for the SS in the Ukraine. Of course, the apparent simplicity of his latest PI case is in inverse proportion to just how complex and dangerous it really is.

A Quiet Flame (2008)

Gunther’s time in the Ukraine, brilliantly rendered by Kerr, not only haunts him for the rest of the series but turns him into a fugitive. This entry seems him flee to Buenos Aires where, once again, his time as a Berlin homicide cop sees him recruited to investigate a crime, with links back to pre-war Germany. This entry was noteworthy for revealing to me the extent of postwar Argentinian leader Juan Perón’s links to the Nazis and his own deeply murderous antisemitism.

Prague Fatale (2011)

Gunther, fresh from the Eastern front, investigating yet another small crime that turns out to be anything but. Before long Gunther is in Prague, working for one of the most loathsome Nazis around, Reinhard Heydrich of the SD, who is wonderfully portrayed by Kerr.

A Man Without Breath (2013)

Post-Stalingrad and the reality of what the Nazis have unleashed in invading Russia is very slowly coming into focus for anyone who cares to notice. Gunther is working for the German War Crimes Bureau - a massive contradiction in terms, as is frequently pointed out in the book - investigating the real life massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, in German occupied Soviet Russia. Possibly the best entry after the first three books and definitely the most dark and noir one of the series.

Metropolis (2019)

The last in the series, which Kerr wrote as he was dying of cancer, is set in Berlin in 1929, the dying days of the Weimar Republic. A prologue of sorts for the series, it sees Gunther working as a young homicide detective investigating what appears to be a serial killer. Excellent stuff.

Middle entries:

Field Grey (2010)

Gunther in Cuba, balancing working for Meyer Lansky with having to spy on him for Cuban military intelligence (for the origins of this complex situation, see If the Dead Not Rise). Long story short, he ends up back in Berlin where he is press ganged into trying to locate a French war criminal and member of the French SS who has been posing as a German Wehrmacht officer.

The Lady From Zagreb (2015)

Set mid WWII, Gunther is forced into working for Germany’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels – stunningly portrayed as an ambitious, malevolent, reptilian snake of a man – which sees him get involved with a rising star of the giant German film company UFA. Said case takes him to Ustashe-controlled Croatia, where he encounters murderous intent easily on par with whatever the Nazis can dish up.

Greeks Bearing Gifts (2018)

Gunther, dwelling in the shadow of another of his many postwar aliases, working as an investigator for a major German insurance company. His latest job takes him to Athens and soon sees him involves in a case involving missing funds stolen from Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz.

The worst in the series:

Prussian Blue (2017)

Just no, don’t even go there. The only book in the series I started but did not finish.

The Other Side of Silence (2016)

The war is over and Gunther is living under an assumed name on the French Riviera. He gets involved with one of his neighbour’s, W. Somerset Maugham, who is being blackmailed. Gunther’s efforts to help Maugham unearth a viper’s nest of wartime intrigue. This one dragged a lot. As I have said, this was a common problem towards the end of the series as the books got bigger and bigger and it is a legitimate question to ask: was Kerr becoming too successful to edit?

Anyway, that is my take. I would be curious to know what you think.

The good news for those of us who love the series is that after years in development hell, it looks like the books will finally come to the screen. As this recent article reports, Apple have greenlit the series, starting with Metropolis, to be produced by long time Gunther fan, Tom Hank’s Playtone Productions. The good news, as far as I am concerned, is the involvement of Peter Straughan as the writer. More important for me than doing Conclave, was Straughan’s involvement in the excellent 2011 of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. As glad as I am to be free of the yoke of event TV, I will gladly shell out an Apple subscription to see this.