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March Violets

Discover Bernie Gunther, 'one of the greatest anti-heroes ever written' (Lee Child)

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About this listen

 'One of the greatest anti-heroes ever written' LEE CHILD

Brutal ex-convicts or the Nazi elite - in Bernie Gunther's world it's hard to tell who are the real gangsters. Hard-boiled noir thriller for fans of Raymond Chandler and John le Carré

Ex-Berlin cop and private detective Bernie Gunther has seen his share of bad guys. But when the worst guys of all are the ones running the show, it's much harder to stay out of their reach.

Hired by a wealthy industrialist to investigate the murder of his daughter and her husband in an apparent botched robbery, Bernie soon finds himself drawn into the complex - not to mention lethal - internal politics and corruption of the Nazi party. When Hermann Goering himself calls Bernie in with a task for him that throws his existing case into a whole new light, he must weigh up his hatred of the Nazis against his desire to stay alive.

(P) 2021 Quercus Editions Limited©2016 Thynker Limited Espionage Historical International Mystery & Crime Modern Detectives Mystery Private Investigators Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense Fiction
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Berlin in the preparations for the 1936 Olympic Games, and Bernhard Gunther, a private investigator specialising in finding missing persons, is hired by a steel multi-millionaire to find family diamonds stolen from the safe of his daughter when she and her husband were murdered, their bodies left to be consumed in the fire set to disguise the crime.
This is a fast paced, often brutal, noir detective story, first of the Bernie Gunter series. It is atmospheric with fine descriptions of even bit part protagonists, vividly forming visuals in the reader's mind's eye, with phrases such as a 'pickled walnut of a nose' and an old woman's foot being 'like a butcher's thumb in a thimble'. The language, like the action, can be crude and uncomfortable as Kerr summons up an impression of the period of change and violence.

Read by Jeff Harding, I was initially uncomfortable with the performance but within just a few pages he had become Bernie Gunther, also providing separate and convincing voices for the numerous other protagonists. It is an excellent performance, increasing the pleasure of an already irreverent, cynical and immersive book.

This has been my first encounter with Philip Kerr's Berlin noir detective series, recommended to me by my brother in law shortly before his death two years ago: his favourite author.

"A silence born of shame."

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I thought about what to write and realised I just had to say “gripping”. Yep. That sums up your journey with Bernie.

Super and so very grounded in the more of Nazi Germany.

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A gripping read with plausible twists and turns set in an accurate historic context. Highly entertaining.

Wonderful

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It doesn’t get any better than these books and they evolve over time. Philip Kerr is missed.

Exceptional start to a magnificent series.

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I’ll try anything that Keeble reads but I have a fascination about history and WW2.

It took a while to get in to but Bernie’s dry sense of humour pulled me in to this noir pre-war Berlin journey.

Really great read, and excellently read by the master.

Superbly written and read by the King

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