Berlin Noir
Bernie Gunther is a classic noir figure: an ex-cop turned private investigator. He has a propensity for worn trench coats and pithy quips and a weak spot for women in trouble. Of course he was a cop in Weimar Berlin and turned PI after the rise of National Socialism. Instead of imagining him speaking like Bogart, I should have been giving him a nice German accent. Berlin Noir, Phillip Kerr’s compilation of his first three Bernie Gunther books, follows our hero in Berlin and Vienna, before, during and after World War II.
Kerr’s novels create a wonderful sense of place – in one of the more unlikely places I’ve visited in my travels via literature – Nazi Berlin. The novels are supposed to be extremely well researched, and certainly seem so to me. What is fascinating about the books is the street-level, day-to-day view of National Socialism. The politics and in-fighting within the regime are partially revealed through Bernie’s investigations, with Göring, Heydrich and Müller all making appearances. Life in fractured post-war Berlin and Vienna are also seen through Bernie’s eyes.
Bernie is no Nazi and hates the day-to-day corruption and violence rampant in its system. He’s a good detective with a soft spot for underdogs and people put in unfair positions. He’s not a perfect man, but one a little too good for the times in which he’s found himself. He describes himself as someone who cannot stand idly by any longer in the second book, The Pale Criminal.
“I’m no knight in shining armor. Just a weather-beaten man in a crumpled overcoat on a street corner with only a grey idea of something you might as well go ahead and call morality. Sure, I’m none too scrupulous about the things that might benefit my pocket, and I could no more inspire a bunch of young thugs to do good works than I could stand up and sing a solo in the church choir. But of one thing I was sure. I was through looking at my fingernails when there were thieves in the store.â€Â
Berlin Noir scratched an itch I had for noir. I found it at my favorite indie bookstore, which has the best recommendations and one of the best mystery sections, hands down, the Book Cellar in Chicago. I’m glad I got the three in one, so I didn’t have to let Bernie go too quickly. Kerr has a couple other Bernie Gunther books, and I highly recommend any of these.
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Too often I assume I've read all I want about WWII and seen as many movies about it I can take: not that I suppose I've got the whole story; rather than it's all so horrible and so ugly and wrenching that I really need to find something nice and soothing, at least for a minute. But I never quite lose my own itch for noir and Bernie Gunther does sound as if he'll tickle me, despite street level despair.
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1. I just don't buy Gunther as a character. He just doesn't hold together: he's a university-trained attorney from a well-placed family, who was initially a member of a very prestigious government department (if I remember, the Foreign Service?). It's very unlikely he would interpret his Weimar descent into becoming a police officer positively (he claims this in the books, but it doesn't really make sense), and becoming a private investigator would just about drive him crazy. He's not an American with our loose sense of class, he's a (previously) high-status German born and educated under the Wilhemine Reich (i.e. Gunther is precisely in the class of people who most supported the Nazi party).
2. Pretty clearly, the other characters don't understand Gunther precisely because he's so anomalous - his career just doesn't make sense. Unless he was a Communist (essentially an unbelievable thing for a high-ranking police officer to be), which he clearly isn't. He's not fond of the Weimar regime, either and, later in the series, is extremely skeptical of the post-war regime. Which makes it totally unclear why he does what he does - he's not proceeding on trying to survive, yet, he becomes a highly placed SS officer when he could have escaped at multiple previous points in his life. He seems to have no coherent or clear politics (remember, he has a doctorate in law, worked in the government, lived in a politics soaked time and seems to be extremely intelligent - he's not the lug from the lower classes that most American hard-boiled PIs are) yet he behaves as if he's heroic.
3. Noir in it's core is a Left critique of capitalist societies. I.E. they end badly (or at least not very positively) partially because capitalism is wrong. Kerr's four books generally show Gunther prospering though the course of the four books, even though Gunther is a relatively honest and just character living in literally the worst regime ever in noir's eyes (he continually gets promoted, he survives the war and becomes a hotel operator by the fourth book).
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Yes, I believe it's in the first book where Gunther mentions that he has a law degree. Law degrees were (and are) very common in Germany and continental Europe as preparations for many careers - Proust and Kafka both had them, for example.