2,226: A Man Without Breath by Philip Kerr

A Man Without Breath is the ninth outing for Philip Kerr’s stained white knight, Bernie Gunther, and is closer in spirit to the darker, more morally ambiguous Field Grey than to the enjoyable but lighter detective story of Prague Fatale.

The story opens a few short months after the German disaster at Stalingrad and, yet again, Bernie has got himself a new job.  This time, although retaining his rank in the SD (the security branch of the SS), he is working for the War Crimes Bureau of the Wehrmacht which is, in essence, a German effort to portray itself in a better light by investigating alleged Allied war crimes.  Staffed by former Prussian judges, it is a small anti-Nazi enclave within the German armed forces and a place where Bernie first comes into contact with a small group of aristocratic army officers plotting to assassinate Hitler.

Being at a loose end following the collapse of his investigation into the alleged British sinking of a German hospital ship, as a result of the principal witness dying in an RAF air raid on Berlin, Bernie finds himself packed off to Smolensk in Russia to investigate claims that a large number of Polish army officers had been killed by the Russians in a nearby forest; a place called Katyn.  If such a thing could be proved, not only would it be a boon for German propaganda, but it could also be used to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and its Western allies.  As such, Bernie finds himself uncomfortably backed by Josef Goebbels himself.

Unfortunately for Bernie, he finds himself stuck in Smolensk at the end of winter and the ground is too hard to begin digging at the suspected mass grave.  Indeed, it’s doubly unfortunate both because Russia in 1943 is a pretty unsafe place for a German but also because he happens to be the nearest thing to a detective available when two members of a German signals regiment are found with their throats slit.  For Bernie, life becomes more uncomfortable still as his own inimitable brand of investigation soon garners him a number of enemies, including Field Marshall Günther von Kluge, the local German commander who wields almost unfettered power in his theatre of operations.

If one were to group together books like Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels, Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko series, Sam Eastland’s Inspector Pekkala books, William Ryan’s Alexei Korolev stories and Rebecca Pawel’s Carlos Tejada works, there appears to be identifiable a sub-genre of detective stories featuring honest detectives trying to do their best to seek justice against the background of repressive and corrupt regimes.  Gunther is typical of this, ideologically opposed to the Nazis but forced to operate within the state’s machinery, trying to remain as uncompromised as possible in an environment that corrupts or breaks all whom it touches.

Kerr is adept at drawing out some of the insanities of the Nazi outlook.  At one point, Bernie notes the lunacy of investigating and hanging two German soldiers for rape and murder of two Russian peasants when only a few miles away, an SS einsatzgruppen has just murdered 25,000 Russian Jews.  He also doubts whether publicising the Katyn massacre of 4,000 Poles is really going to deflect attention from the mass killings of Jews in Eastern Europe by the German forces.

As always, Kerr’s knowledge of the period and its personalities is exemplary.  One of the joys of a Bernie Gunther novel is the appearance of actual politicians and soldiers of the time, in this instance ranging from Josef Goebbels to July Plotters General von Tresckow, Hans von Dohnanyi, Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Wilhelm Canaris and Rudolf von Gersdorff.  Kerr’s historical notes at the end of each Gunther novel are also fascinating, revealing the fates of the individuals he introduces as characters.

In combining historical fiction with a hard-boiled detective theme, Kerr takes the Bernie Gunther stories to a deeply satisfying level.  Morally complex and ambiguous, entertaining yet melancholy and revealing both the resilience of the human spirit and the depths to which humans can sink, they are amongst my very favourite crime novels.  Best read in order, they are “must reads” for any crime fiction or, indeed, historical fiction enthusiast and, although his most recent books are not Bernie Gunther stories, I am counting the slowly passing days until the return of Bernie, a deeply flawed but attractive hero.

2,526: Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr

Prague Fatale is the eighth book in Philip Kerr’s series of novels featuring Berlin detective Bernie Gunther.  The books, although they jump back and forth in Bernie’s timeline, roughly follow his career as, firstly, a Berlin police detective in the 1930s, through his short-lived stints as the hotel detective at the Adlon, one of Berlin’s finest, and private detective, and back to being a police detective, albeit under the Nazis and with a technical commission in the SS.  The novels are an engaging blend of historical fiction and hard-boiled detective fiction, with Bernie as a Germanic Philip Marlowe.

In this new instalment, Bernie is back at his desk in Berlin.  It is 1941.  The Wehrmacht is fighting its way into the Soviet Union and the persecution of Germany’s Jews is reaching its pre-Final Solution zenith.  Bernie is trying to help the two Jewish sisters living in the same block as him by taking them tinned food when he comes upon an attempted rape, which he prevents.  With this being a Bernie Gunther story, the victim turns out to be a wise-cracking beauty with whom he begins an affair.

So far, so good.  But there is a problem just around the problem in the form of Bernie’s ultimate boss, one Reinhard Heydrich.  Recently promoted to Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich is worried both about a group of Czech resistance fighters known as the Three Kings and threats to his own personal safety.  Heydrich makes Bernie an offer he simply can’t refuse (especially given his own known lack of Nazi feelings).  Bernie becomes Heydrich’s personal detective and moves to Prague, along with his new lady friend.

Murder indeed does happen but Heydrich is not the victim.  At a weekend house party at Heydrich’s castle in Prague, one of his adjutants, a homosexual who was sent back from the Eastern Front in disgrace for refusing to take part in the murder of Jews, is found dead in his locked bedroom, both drugged and shot.  Bernie takes charge of the investigation to unmask the killer.

Prague Fatale begins like previous Bernie Gunther novels as a World War II set hard-boiled detective story.  Although over the course of the series, Bernie has moved from being wise-crackingly cynical about the Nazis and Germany’s situation to being a little more melancholic, there is still plenty of fast-talking , a wealth of urban Berlin detail and some nice historical touches, particularly a clever snapshot of Bernie going through Heydrich’s diary and finding an entry scheduling a meeting at Wannsee in Janary 1942.  As World War II aficionados will appreciate, this is a reference to the infamous Wannsee Conference, at which the Final Solution was promulgated and adopted.  It is a nice idea, merely making a throwaway reference to such a significant event and lends added historical authenticity to the book.

About halfway through, though, the entire style seems to change and we shift into an Agatha Christie-esque country house murder, which then morphs further into a classic John Dickson Carr-type locked room mystery.  Now, none of this throws Bernie off his stride, especially as the suspects are all high-ranking SS and SD officers, whom Bernie thoroughly enjoys interrogating.  Our hero unmasks the killer but, being Bernie, there is a typically downbeat ending for him.

I found Prague Fatale both better and worse than its predecessor, .  It has a cleaner, more cohesive story line and avoids both the jumping around in time of Field Grey and some of the internal inconsistencies that it introduced into Bernie’s backstory.  I can appreciate that some Bernie fans will get irritated at the introduction of soft-boiled detective themes into Prague Fatale but I actually quite enjoyed the excursion.  I am also unable to resist the image of Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague, as an inveterate fan of Hercule Poirot and Agatha Christie’s novels.  I have no idea whether there is any basis in fact for this but it makes for an unsettling, if amusing image.

On the down side, there is less meat to Prague Fatale than any of its predecessors.  Although Field Grey was flawed as a story, it was an interesting examination of Bernie’s character and the nature of the compromises required in the Third Reich.  Prague Fatale has no such depth and is merely a clever detective story.  Bernie is far less complex here, with none of the moral ambiguities of earlier books in the series.

It’s probably fair to say that the original trilogy, published in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s are superior to the later books (and may well have been intended to be a complete series in themselves) and Kerr may well be jumping back and forth in time to fill in gaps and make sure he has squeezed all he can from Gunther but, even so, this is one of my favourite detective series and well worth a look (but start at the beginning, not the middle).

2,561: Field Grey by Philip Kerr

There’s a sub-set of the crime/spy/thriller genre that comprises novels set in Europe either just before or during the Second World War.  A typical example would involve an ambiguous, morally compromised hero (although “hero” may be too loaded a word; “protagonist” may be more accurate) who tries to maintain his values amidst the political upheavals of Central Europe or the totalitarian regimes of Germany and the Soviet Union.  The star writers of this sub-genre are the likes of Alan Furst, David Downing and Philip Kerr.

The hero of Kerr’s series is Bernie Gunther.  Bernie has spent much of the ‘30s as a senior officer in Berlin’s Kripo, the police agency responsible for investigating “ordinary” (as opposed to “political”) crime.  Struggling to maintain his integrity and professionalism as the Kripo becomes increasingly politicised as the Nazis gain power, he eventually can’t stomach any more and leaves, setting up his own private detective agency.  At other points in his pre-War career, he is also Head of Security at the Hotel Adlon.

Philip Kerr wrote the first three Bernie Gunther books 20 years or so ago and, having written ten other novels and tried to break into Hollywood in the interim, returned to him in 2006.  Since then, he has added a further four instalments to the series, with another, Prague Fatale, due out this autumn.  My love for this series can be seen in the fact that I have already pre-ordered a copy (and should some enterprising publisher’s PR person wish, I would be only to happy to review a pre-publication copy – I can always dream!).

Field Grey opens in the familiar Kerr style.  Gunther, who could easily have stepped straight out of the pages of a Raymond Chandler novel, is in pre-Castro Havana, still exiled from Germany, where he is (unfairly) wanted as a war criminal.  However, it soon becomes clear that this is not another detective story with a period setting.  In fact, the ostensible plot, the tracking down and identification of a French war criminal, Edgard de Boudel, is all but discarded and takes up a relatively small part of the book. Although I would not have minded another Bernie Gunther detective story at all, what Kerr has done in Field Grey is altogether less expected and, really quite brave.

The core of the story is the twisted relationship Bernie has with one Erich Mielke (yes, the Erich Mielke who became Head of the East German Stasi), a Communist whom Bernie rescues from a Nazi gang in 1930 and subsequently encounters during and after the War.  As the book progresses, their relationship becomes more and more important, until, by the end, it is clear that it has been the centre of the story.  What this permits Kerr to do, though, is to tell for the first time the story of what Bernie Gunther actually did during the Second World War.  Up to now, each of Kerr’s stories has been set either before or after the War and Bernie’s wartime exploits have only been alluded to.

It is brave of Kerr to do this because, you see, Bernie Gunther spent part of his War as a member of an SS police battalion on the Eastern Front. All of a sudden, Good Old Bernie, the professional policeman who kept his moral compass amidst the evil of the Nazi regime, starts to appear a lot less sympathetic.  Kerr faces up to this and, although he makes it clear that Bernie was not involved in the murder of Jews or any part of the Holocaust, objects to the atrocities being carried out in Russia and is removed from that theatre by his ex-boss, Kerr is prepared to allow Bernie to have killed Russian partisans.

This could have been a death blow for Kerr’s series.  If the tale of Bernie’s service in Russia had been botched, Bernie’s character could have been tarnished so badly that he would no longer have been viable as the hero of the series.  Instead, he is tarnished but to a degree and in a manner that has enabled him to maintain our sympathy and engagement whilst adding another layer to the book’s central theme.

Field Grey is, at its heart, an examination of the moral grey areas that arise for individuals seeking to survive in the midst of war and the clash of totalitarian ideologies.  Bernie is a compromised man.  He ha not come out of the War wholly clean.  He has sacrificed part of his soul and his self-respect for physical survival but also for the preservation of his basic inner beliefs.  He has accepted being pushed and treated as a pawn by the forces of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the CIA and the French but has somehow come out alive, bloodied, damaged but not destroyed.

To be honest, Kerr is not in the same class as either le Carré or even Alan Furst when it comes to dealing with moral ambiguities and there are also a number of irritating jumps and cutaways from one time and place to another, which disrupt the flow of the story.  Nevertheless, Field Grey was a gripping and interesting read and another great instalment in the Bernie Gunther saga.

One word of advice:  I suspect that Kerr originally meant the series to be the trilogy he wrote 20 years ago and so the stories jump around in terms of time and place.  Although you can read them out of order or as standalone pieces, I would recommend that you read them in order.  And read them you should.