Berlin Noir: March Violets /The Pale Criminal /A German Requiem - Philip Kerr

Written by Philip Kerr
Read by John Lee
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

These three mysteries are exciting and insightful looks at life inside Nazi Germany — richer and more readable than most histories of the period. We first meet ex-policeman Bernie Gunther in 1936….

March Violets
Bernie Gunther Series, Book 1
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: January 8, 2008
Duration: 09:15:48

Bernie Gunther, an ex-policeman who thought he’d seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin–until he turned freelance and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture.

The Olympic Games are about to start; some of Bernie’s Jewish friends are beginning to realize that they should have left while they could; and Gunther himself has been hired to look into two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party.

Hard-hitting, fast-paced, and richly detailed, MARCH VIOLETS is noir listening at its best and blackest.

“Echoes of Raymond Chandler but better on his vivid and well-researched detail than the master”–Evening Standard

March violets is a derogatory term used by the Nazis to refer to those who converted “late.” In this first of three novels written with wonderful historical detail about Berlin in the 1930s, ex-policeman Bernie Gunther, who is reminiscent of a hard-boiled gumshoe, has to work hard not to reveal his disgust at what is being done to his Jewish friends. The murder and robbery he is hired to investigate seem like small potatoes against this backdrop of cultural meltdown. John Lee uses an edgy tone and changing timbre to capture the atmosphere of fear and excess that pervades this meticulous glimpse into a dark moment in time. D.G. (c) AudioFile 2008,

The Pale Criminal
Bernie Gunther Series, Book 2
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: May 6, 2008
Duration: 09:21:55

In The Pale Criminal, it’s 1938, and Gunther has been blackmailed into rejoining the police by Heydrich himself.

The backdrop for this detective story is 1938 Berlin, where private eye Bernie Gunther has been shanghaied back into police work to catch a serial killer.

In the second installment of Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy, Gunther’s assignment leads him into the darker, clinical side of prewar Germany, and you can almost hear the scalpels being sharpened and the heels clicking. The production uses a neat hat trick. Narrator John Lee employs various English accents to signify the class and style of each German character. Lee is an ideal match for Kerr–he’s previously delivered two other works by the author–and his authoritative, resonant tone makes this a classy package. R.W.S. (c) AudioFile 2008,

A German Requiem
Bernie Gunther Series, Book 3
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: March 4, 2008
Duration: 10:42:24

In A German Requiem, the saddest and most disturbing of the three books, it’s 1947 as Gunther stumbles across a nightmare landscape that conceals even more death than he imagines.

Bernie Gunther had his first brush with evil as a policeman in 1930s Berlin and came to know it intimately as a private eye under the Nazis, when each case drew him deeper into the enormities of the regime. Now the war is over and Gunther’s in Vienna, trying to clear an old friend of the murder of an American officer. Amid decaying imperial splendor he traces concentric circles of depravity that lead him to a former head of the Gestapo.

Gripping, frightening, and pungently atmospheric, A GERMAN REQUIEM demonstrates Philip Kerr’s power to take his listeners hostage.

“Echoes of Raymond Chandler but better on his vivid and well-researched detail than the master.” –Evening Standard (London)

“Kerr has the talent to . . . take you places you have never been.”–The Washington Post Book World

P.I. Bernie Gunther takes a case that allows him to leave his personal miseries behind in war-torn Berlin and to head to Vienna in order to prove the innocence of a black marketeer. John Lee uses his handsome voice to excellent advantage in this gritty story of post-war Germany, where nothing is as it seems, no one is innocent, and survival is primary. Lee expertly delivers Kerr’s historically driven details, including the complexities of U.S. complicity in postwar deals with former enemies and the ironic tangles of morality and war. Lee turns in another inspired performance with this dark, disturbing book. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008,