March Violets [Hardcover]

Philip Kerr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 1989

This crime novel, set in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, features private detective Gunther, who is disgusted by the anti-semitism, but is not averse to making money out of the horrors. An industrialist asks him to investigate the deaths of his daughter and her Nazi husband.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The brutality and corruption of Nazi Germany serve as the backdrop for this impressive debut mystery novel. Scottish-born Kerr re-creates the period accurately and with verve; the novel reeks of the sordid decade that saw Hitler's rise to power. Bernhard Gunther is a hard-boiled Berlin detective who specializes in tracking down missing persons--mostly Jews. He is summoned by a wealthy industrialist to find the murderer of his daughter and son-in-law, killed during the robbery of a priceless diamond necklace. Gunther quickly is catapulted into a major political scandal involving Hitler's two main henchmen, Goering and Himmler. The search for clues takes Gunther to morgues overflowing with Nazi victims; raucous nightclubs; the Olympic games where Jesse Owens tramples the theory of Aryan racial superiority; the boudoir of a famous actress; and finally to the Dachau concentration camp. Fights with Gestapo agents, shoot-outs with adulterers, run-ins with a variety of criminals, and dead bodies in unexpected places keep readers guessing to the very end. Narrator Gunther is a spirited guide through the chaos of 1930s Berlin and, more important, a detective cast in the classic mold. Kerr is at work on a sequel to this sparkling and witty tale.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Echoes of Raymond Chandler but better on his vivid and well-researched detail than the master." —Evening Standard



"Taut, brutal, coarse, believable and gripping stuff." —Sunday Telegraph



"Kerr’s complex intrigue allows space for brilliantly provoking political asides." —Sunday Times

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1St Edition edition (July 3, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670824313
• ISBN-13: 978-0670824311
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Philip Kerr was born in Edinburgh in 1956 and read Law at university. Having learned nothing as an undergraduate lawyer he stayed on as postgraduate and read Law and Philosophy, most of this German, which was when and where he first became interested in German twentieth century history and, in particular, the Nazis. Following university he worked as a copywriter at a number of advertising agencies, including Saatchi & Saatchi, during which time he wrote no advertising slogans of any note. He spent most of his time in advertising researching an idea he'd had for a novel about a Berlin-based policeman, in 1936. And following several trips to Germany - and a great deal of walking around the mean streets of Berlin - his first novel, March Violets, was published in 1989 and introduced the world to Bernie Gunther.
"I loved Berlin before the wall came down; I'm pretty fond of the place now, but back then it was perhaps the most atmospheric city on earth. Having a dark, not to say black sense of humour myself, it's always been somewhere I feel very comfortable."
Having left advertising behind, Kerr worked for the London Evening Standard and produced two more novels featuring Bernie Gunther: The Pale Criminal (1990) and A German Requiem (1991). These were published as an omnibus edition, Berlin Noir in 1992.
Thinking he might like to write something else, he did and published a host of other novels before returning to Bernie Gunther after a gap of sixteen years, with The One from the Other (2007).
Says Kerr, "I never intended to leave such a large gap between Book 3 and Book 4; a lot of other stuff just got in the way; and I feel kind of lucky that people are still as interested in this guy as I am. If anything I'm more interested in him now than I was back in the day."
Two more novels followed, A Quiet Flame (2008) and If the Dead Rise Not (2009).
Field Gray (2010) is perhaps his most ambitious novel yet that features Bernie Gunther. Crossing a span of more than twenty years, it takes Bernie from Cuba, to New York, to Landsberg Prison in Germany where he vividly describes a story that covers his time in Paris, Toulouse, Minsk, Konigsberg, and his life as a German POW in Soviet Russia.
Kerr is already working on an eighth title in the series.
"I don't know how long I can keep doing them; I'll probably write one too many; but I don't feel that's happened yet."
As P.B.Kerr Kerr is also the author of the popular 'Children of the Lamp' series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As good a detective novel as you will ever read, January 3, 2006

By 

Grey Wolffe "Zeb Kantrowitz" (North Waltham, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: March Violets (Bernie Gunther) (Paperback)

From page one the strength of narrative and the wisecracking of the PI Bernhard "Bernie" Gunther is a detective novel readers dream. Philip Kerr is able to bring 1936 Berlin alive it all it's nationalistic insanity. His ability to describe how the Nazi party had taken total control of this nation is remarkable.

He has picked-up the nuance of how people delude themselves into believing what they are told, no matter how implausible.

Right from the start you know that Gunther is as cynical as you can be, without being arrested by the Gestapo (which he is at a later point of the book). The way he weaves the disillusionment of the average German, while at the same time showing how they just acquiest to what was going on. Unlike most books about Germany at this time, he presents the Nazi's as people not cardboard cutouts. He does, though, show them in all their sadism and brutality. But it is a brutality that has become humdrum and expected. No one is surprised by what is going on. Everyone is just hoping it doesn't happen to them.

Especially appealing is Gunther's gumshoe comments and asides as to what is going on. At one point he gets out of his car and gives the "Hitler salute" when the party standard is paraded by. His comment, "it's not worth taking a beating for not saluting". He tells of a circulating joke, that next to Jews, Hitler hates homosexuals and cripples the most. The punch line is that everyone but Hitler knows that his Minister of Propaganda, Joseph "Joey" Goebbels has a club foot.

You can just imagine Robert Mitchum or Humphrey Bogart playing this "fleabite" PI. He drinks, he smokes, and he's like a junkyard dog when it comes to doing his job. There are great descriptions of the war between Reichfurher Himmler, the head of the Gestapo and SS and Prime Minister of Prussia Hermann Goering.

The ending, is just a pregnant pause, we know that there are two more books in the "Berlin Noir" trilogy, and that's the way that Kerr leaves us at the end of this book. You know you have to read the other two.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 3 1/2 Stars -- An Old-School Crime Noir Set In Prewar Berlin Under The Nazis!, May 24, 2008

By 

bobbewig (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: March Violets (Bernie Gunther) (Paperback)

If you enjoy/enjoyed the old-school crime novels with characters like Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade, you'll enjoy March Violets, which is set in Berlin in 1936 and features tough-talking, hard-drinking, chain-smoking and cynical Bernhard Gunther. Gunther is an ex-cop, now private investigator hired by a rich businessman to find some jewelry that was stolen, and which had belonged to the businessman's recently murdered daughter. In addition, Gunther is "requested" by Herman Goering to find some important missing papers. I found Kerr's description of prewar Berlin and life in Nazi Germany to be very good, and considered the plot to be engrossing. These two elements are worthy of a 4- 4 1/2 star rating. What brought my overall rating of March Violets down to 3 1/2 stars is that I found that Kerr went somewhat overboard in portraying Gunther's tough guy attitude and in having Gunther speak ad nauseum in cliches. At times, I felt that Kerr was trying to create a satire of the type of detective novels that were popular in the '30s, '40s and '50s. March Violets is a good book that held my attention, and created enough interest to make me want to read the next book in Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy. However, unless you are a lover of crime noir books, March Violets is not a book that I'd recommend you rush out to buy and put at the top of your To Be Read list.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific debut, Herr Kerr!, April 14, 2011

By 

H. S. Wedekind "Mr. Weekend" (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: March Violets (Bernie Gunther) (Paperback)

"I didn't see the India Rubber so much as hear it sweep through the air towards my head. In the split second before I hit the floor and lost consciousness I told myself that I was getting tired of being knocked out." Bernie Gunther, PI

MARCH VIOLETS is the first book by Philip Kerr that I've read, but it won't be the last. This novel along with THE PALE CRIMINAL and A GERMAN REQUIEM make up Kerr's BERLIN NOIR trilogy. Set in Hitler's Germany, which was a terrifying place to live in then, especially for Jews, homosexuals, and communists, even before WW2, the story follows Berlin PI Bernie Gunther as he looks for a murderer/arsonist who killed an industrial tycoon's daughter and son-in-law and stole a very valuable piece of jewelry. He meets a lot of bad people along the way, and not all of them are Nazis, but Bernie is one tough fellow. He can, and does, take a punch on the chin (or a sap to the back of the head) and come up with a witty, albeit cynical, remark. I won't go into more, because others have done so better than I could. Read MARCH VIOLETS for yourself and I promise you'll get hooked on Bernie just like I did.

Highly recommended - 5 Stars