Metropolis could be read as a stand-alone, but for those who know Bernie’s
future, it is fascinating to have a glimpse into his past. (Review by Margaret
von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
For those of us dedicated fans of Bernie
Gunther, Philip Kerr’s world-weary and morally ambivalent character, this is a
sad moment. The author died last year, tragically young, and so Bernie will
have no more outings after this, his fourteenth.
We’ve followed Bernie from pre-war Berlin,
both as a cop and a private detective, through his horrible war which covered
places like Russia and Prague, and his post-war, peripatetic life which saw him
in Vienna, Cuba, Argentina, France and back in Germany. And now, we go back to
1928 in Berlin, with the Nazis on the rise but not yet in power and Bernie
newly promoted to the homicide division of the Berlin police force.
The city is being terrorised by a serial
killer who is targeting and scalping prostitutes – the kind of detail that puts
Kerr’s writing on a cliff-edge of falling over into nastiness but which is
saved by wit and an underlying moral decency. And there seems to be another
killer in operation, taking out disabled veterans of the Great War who beg on
the streets as the Weimar Republic totters into insolvency and chaos. Bernie’s
boss is the historical figure of Bernhard Weiss, who, as a Jew, is hated by the
Nazis who would love to see him mess up his investigations. And one of the dead
prostitutes is the daughter of a leading figure in Berlin’s vicious criminal
underworld. So there is plenty of background angst to be negotiated.
Bernie is dealing with demons from his time
in the trenches, dealing with them by drinking. But, being Bernie, he just
about manages to hold it together, and, inevitably, finds plenty of female
company along the way, including in the Theater am Schiffbauer where rehearsals
for The Threepenny Opera are in full
swing, the music not impressing Bernie overmuch. But it’s this kind of
historical detail which makes the series so compelling.
Metropolis could be read as a stand-alone, but for those who know Bernie’s
future, it is fascinating to have a glimpse into his past. Back in 2010, when I
interviewed Kerr, he described Bernie to me by saying: “Like most people he’s
not a hero. But he’s not a villain either.” And it’s this complexity, combined
with the driest and darkest of humour and the brilliantly drawn background that
makes the series. There may not be any more, but all are good enough for
re-reading. ISBN 9780735218895 - Margaret von Klemperer
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