March Violets
THE FIRST NOVEL IN PHILIP KERR’S ACCLAIMED HISTORICAL MYSTERY SERIES
When private investigator Bernie Gunther agrees to track down some stolen jewels, his search takes him down the dangerous streets of pre-World War 2 Berlin and into the path of the most influential players in Nazi Germany…
Wisecracking cop turned private investigator Bernie Gunther specializes in missing persons, and as the Third Reich’s power has grown, Bernie has become a very busy man. But as he takes on cases involving millionaire industrialists, stolen diamonds, and Hitler’s most powerful cronies, Bernie finds himself mired in the brutality and corruption of a country on the brink of war.
Hard-hitting, fast-paced, and richly detailed, March Violets is noir writing at its blackest and best.
- Pages
- 245
- First published
- July 3, 1989
- Language
- English
- Edition
- Ebook
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Shelved by 1 Litcadian
Reviews
Started August 27, 2025 · Finished August 31, 2025
So my main reaction was 'wow look at this piece of shit, hope he dies in an air raid' but then I looked at the rest of the series and apparently he happily survives the whole fucking war and helps the Americans fight the dirty commies or whatever the fuck, so fuck him. Will not be continuing the series. The writing style is cringeworthily full of itself, obnoxiously misogynistic, and like listen I knew there would be racism in a book about the Nazis okay. I didn't expect the author to have a whole list of 'pithy noir one-liners: anti-semitic edition' because that's...that's weird. Even if it isn't the narrator doing them (he likes to think he's not complicit, again, please die in an air raid') they are really noticeable and not in a good way. This affectation gets mostly dropped in the <spoiler>Dachau section </spoiler>because the author at least realized he needed to treat that seriously. But it did not fix anything about the rest of the book and honestly kind of made everything worse. Also frankly it's ridiculous that he <spoiler>made it out once he was in. Heydrich isn't that stupid. </spoiler> If he got killed at the end I'd have given it a much better rating because that would have been kind of a statement 🤷 I just have no charity for collaborators right now.