Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Fiction
Related: About this forumAnybody familiar with Phillip Kerr's novels, featuring Bernie Gunther?
I'm reading the latest one, "A Man Without Breath," and I'm impressed.
The setting is wartime Berlin, 1943. Bernie Gunther is a police detective, trying to solve murders and stay alive, while dealing with problems from the Gestapo and Goebbels' propaganda ministry. Dark, sardonic stuff; imagine a detective story, set in that "Cabaret" nightclub. My favorite passage, so far, discussing the dysfunctional remnants of the justice system in Germany:
"By the winter of 1943, you found your laughs where you could, and I don't know how else to describe a situation in which you can have an army corporal hanged for the rape and murder of a Russian peasant girl in one village that's only a few kilometers from another village where an SS special action group has just murdered twenty-five thousand men, women and children."
Tough, well-written stuff.
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Anybody familiar with Phillip Kerr's novels, featuring Bernie Gunther? (Original Post)
Paladin
Apr 2013
OP
"A Man Without Breath": No.13 on this week's NY Times Best Seller list..... (nt)
Paladin
May 2013
#3
MountainLaurel
(10,271 posts)1. Love those books
I've got Prague Fatale checked out of the library right now.
Have you read Alan Furst's spy novels from the same period?
Paladin
(29,009 posts)2. I'll probably read more of this series.
And I'll look into the Furst books. Thanks.
Paladin
(29,009 posts)3. "A Man Without Breath": No.13 on this week's NY Times Best Seller list..... (nt)