Customer Reviews

The Pale Criminal

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Pale Criminal is the second book in Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy featuring Bernie Gunther, a tough-talking, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, cynical ex-cop, now private detective. The Pale Criminal takes place in 1938 Germany (mostly Berlin) and has Gunther working a case involving the murder of several teeange German girls. The Kripo (police) are unable to make progress in the case and Gunther is "requested" by Reinhard Heydrich, second in importance in the SS only to Heinrich Himmler, to temporarily rejoin the Kripo to take charge of the investigation. The interesting, though at times slow moving, plot reveals that some members of the Nazi party want to use the multiple murders to further incite anti-Jewish feelings. I found Kerr's description of pre-war Berlin and life in Nazi Germany to be engrossing, and it made me feel like I was right there experiencing the tension that permeated life in these times. The Pale Criminal is a good book that held my attention, and created enough interest to make me eager to read the third book in Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy.

It is August 26, 1938. Arthur Nebe, Kripo head, meets Bernhard Gunther, private investigator, in the middle of the night. It seems that Heydrich thinks Bernie would be useful to him if he were back in Kripo.

Frau Lange is a new client. She wants Bernie to find out who is blackmailing her. To investigate the case he goes to stay in a clinic in Wannsee. Psychoanalysis has been banned, psychotherapy is the order of the day. Dr. Meyer, Bernie's physician, is a Jungian. Homosexuality is a criminal offense under the German Penal Code Section 175. Bernie's partner is murdered, the alleged blackmailer commits suicide, and Bernie is back at Kripo with a higher rank. He is working at Heydrich's behest to solve a serial murder case. He is now Kommissar Gunther.

There are four dead girls and another missing. When Bernie learns from the Kripo head of unoffficial mercy killings, he knows that things have already gotten worse than he imagined. The body of the fifth victim is found through an anonymous call to Kripo.

A suspect who through investigation becomes a nonsuspect turns up dead and a sixth girl, a fourteen year old attending a fee paying school, is missing. A schoolmate of the girl recalls a man wearing a uniform stopping his car near the school. Some of the men start to believe that one of their squad members has killed the nonsuspect. Gunther eliminates the man from the squad notwithstanding his protests that his actions are nothing compared to actions of higher officials.

In order to break open the case the squad decides to use another young girl as bait. Two SS men are responsible for the crimes. Bernhard Gunther solves the mystery just before Kristallnacht. The book is outstanding. The dark morally chaotic universe of National Socialism is portrayed admirably.

The Pale Criminal is the second book in Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy that he wrote back in the late '80s and early '90s. The trilogy features Bernie Gunther, a former cop who now makes a living as a private detective in Germany in the late 1930s. After writing these first three books, Kerr changed direction and showed his range by writing several stand-alone novels in the genres of science fiction, historical fiction, and thriller. In 2006 he returned to his beginnings and has since written four more books featuring Gunther.

Young girls are going missing and later turning up dead and brutalized in Berlin. None of the victims have been Jewish and all of them fit the Aryan stereotype tauted by Hitler's regime as the master race. Bernie Gunther, is forced back into working for the German police by the SS because the case surrounding the missing girls seems to be leading nowhere.

Gunther is an intriguing character. He's crass, politically incorrect, and has his vices. But underlying those characteristics is a man who will take any steps necessary in order to see that the guilty are punished, whether they're a Nazi or a Jew, and that the innocent are protected irregardless of who they are as well.

The plot is gritty and at times a little slow in unfolding. But it does an excellent job of creating the type of atmosphere I would imagine existed in Germany at that time in history. I enjoyed it but would not recommend it to those of a sensitive nature.

This book is not funny. And it's not for the squeamish. Yes, there are a couple of laughs, a funny line or two due to Kerr's signature stylized (and a bit too frequent) similes, and an occasional warm passage, thanks to some good writing and a few compassionate characters. But, if you don't have the stomach for hideous crimes, body parts blown to smithereens, gruesome descriptions of girls being brutalized, and up close shooting people in the head and face, well, don't read it. It is not an enjoyable tale. It is, this "The Pale Criminal" by Philip Kerr, a grueling, ugly read, and I had to put it down often, simply because the story and descriptions of degradation were almost too much to endure. "Pale Criminal" is the middle story in the Bernie Gunther trilogy called, "Berlin Noir." It is certainly "noir", that's for sure.

Kerr is meticulous in keeping his focus on the Nazis, who are the true criminals in his shady world of police and detective work, and insistent on keeping the reader focused on wrongs done to Jews in 1938 Berlin, as things got worse and worse (for everyone, especially Jews), in the months leading up to Kristallnacht in November of that year.

"The Pale Criminal" is very well written and engrossing in its own repugnant, grisly way. And you must be able to accommodate Kerr's main detective character`s tendency to be a considerable amoral lawbreaker of his own - to say nothing of his rather conscience-free ability to actually murder bad guys. From the beginning of these modern day detective stories (perhaps the 1920s), it is quite amazing to me that all of the "heroes" are people (mainly men) of questionable mental stability. They are all considerably weird, and this guy Bernie Gunther follows closely in their footsteps with all their faults, and at times he is unable to subdue his own psychopathology. The end of the book, while touching, did not convince me that Bernie had a conscience.

There are a few too many characters - all with similar sounding and looking names, thus easily mixed up or confused with others, but we meet some of the all-time worst criminals in Germany's sad Nazi-era history. And, the reader is one more time regaled with the all-too-commonplace characteristics of one more detective who cannot keep his hands off women, his lips from sucking on a cigarette, or his thirst for booze unquenched. So boring, all that is. What makes this detective different is that he is also a criminal.

The pace is quick, the action strong, and the detective work first class - Bernie does have a big brain and is very brave and clever. But, one more time, this is a very nasty story about very nasty people committing very nasty crimes solved by a very nasty detective in a nasty time in Berlin under Hitler. There is truly not one likable major character here, no one to admire, and hardly any philosophy worth remembering. And the crimes could cause bad dreams. You've been warned.

All-in-all, it's a (bloody) 4

Phillip Kerr certainly has given me a lot of insight into how WWII started & Hitler's influence on his people I had not realized.

Wonderful. Read all his Bernie novels. Field grey is latest. Although you don't have to read them in the published order, it adds to the surprise of Kerr's ability.

Philip Kerr's THE PALE CRIMINAL preaches the absent of hope in Berlin in the last years prior to WWII. Everything and everyone is decadent. Survival alone counts as a monumental achievement. But, having lived another day, policemen Bernie Gunther wonders what mere survival is because what good is living if your life has no meaning. Kerr puts Gunther in the middle of a murder investigation where he has to toe the line between historical villians Himmler and Heydrich. The persecution of the Jews is unrelenting, and the corruption is nearly unbearable, but Gunther's determination to do his job keeps him going when everything around him is crumbling. Not a novel for light reading, but one with a coherent story and a likeable protagonist among monsters run amok.

I read the three Bernie Gunther books after reading Kerr's current "If the Dead Not Rise." They fill in the gap between the two sections of that book, detailing what occurred between 1935 and 1954. They are very enjoyable, especially as a window on pre-WWII Germany, and are quite "film noir" in style. Not quite as dark as Alan Furst, but in the same mood. Gunther is a former German policeman turned private detective when all non-Nazis were purged from the force. He is very much Sam Spade in Berlin, the cynical, wiseguy PI in the style of Bogart's Rick. If you like the era, you will really enjoy the Gunther series.

This is the first Philip Kerr book I read. The plot is believable. Bernie Gunther (the main character) is a chracter that you'd like right from the beginning. The tough ex-cop turned PI is smart and has a sense of humour. The story is set in 1938 pre-war Berlin. Kerr does a great job describing the atmosphere at the time, the fear and danger for normal germans, the power wielded by nazis at the time. Against this backdrop is set a story of several murders that Bernie is asked to investigate. I won't give away any more of the plot. This book is highly recommended. Looking forward to more Bernie Gunther mysteries.

#2 in the Bernie Gunther series
It's 1938 in Berlin and Frau Lange hires Bernie to find out who is blackmailing her about her son's homosexuality, a crime in Nazi Germany. Then Bernie is convinced by Reinhard Heydrich of the SS and Arthur Nebe of the Kripo (police) to rejoin the police in order to solve the ritual killing of young blond German girls. The murders are being hidden from the public since they are an embarrassment in Nazi Germany, which has no crime. The Kripo have convinced a Jew to confess to the crimes, but Bernie is convinced he is innocent. In fact, Bernie begins to suspect that someone is orchestrating and arranging the murder victims in order to incite public opinion against the Jews. Both cases come together immediately before the Kristallnacht pogrom that destroyed more than 7000 Jewish businesses, burnt down 177 synagogues, and killed 100 Jews.

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