Philip Kerr, 2010, (June 2015)
This book is awful. Having read Philip Kerr’s first three novels in the
anthology edition, Berlin Noir, I
knew what to expect, so I was not really surprised that I didn’t enjoy this
book. It had the same things that I liked and hated in the first novels, and I
chose to read it because there are some things I like in it.
Kerr’s historical description is detailed, concrete and sufficiently
accurate factually that I’m willing to credit him with likely getting the life
details right. So if you want to know how one negotiates life under a fascist
bureaucracy, and that’s the sort of thing I am interested in, then there is a
reason to read Kerr’s fiction. Of course, Kerr’s protagonist, Bernie Gunther,
does much more than negotiate everyday life – he’s kicked out of the police for
his support of the liberal goals of the Weimar Republic, but feels compelled as
a hotel detective to look into the criminals in the hotel who are profiteering with
the Nazi government. Under a tough exterior, he has an honest heart, but one he
has to hide to survive the corrupt times. His frequently cynical, sarcastic
comments can be read as an expression of the conflict he feels.
Between the seedy bars and Alexanderplatz police station, the
Olympic construction site and the Adlon Hotel, he covers a lot of Berlin, and
later covers similar ground in Cuba. He shows the petty and major corruption,
the ambitions and the avoidances that Berliners adopt to get by or to profit
under the violent, anti-Semitic and racist nationalism of the Nazis. He paints
a picture that is vile and gritty with no sense of hope except to just get
through until things change. I imagine that that’s how a lot of people did try
to survive.
Unfortunately, Kerr overdoes the historical detail, so some
passages read as if he found some interesting descriptions in his research, and
wants to cram it all in. Curious as I am about the period, I don’t need
exaggerated architectural description to get the point.
What I don’t like about this book, and the earlier ones I
read, are the clumsy, overdone “hardboiled” style in which it is narrated. Kerr
adopts the most obvious characteristics of Raymond Chandler’s style without
restraint, and embellishes them with grotesque exaggeration and unrelenting
sexism. Written in the first-person voice of narrator Bernie Gunther, it’s inescapable
and it’s too much. Where Chandler used a sarcastic wit to illuminate his
character’s point of view, Kerr turns the style into caricature. By half way through
the book, I began to skip the satirical asides because they added nothing to
the characters or the storyline.
Kerr’s characters are little better. They are stereotypes with
little depth or development. When they do something unexpected, rather than
think that there is a new side to a complex personality, I just think, where
did that come from? The relationship that develops between Gunther and the
American hotel guest merely seems absurd and unbelievable. The introduction of a
string of American characters seems more of an attempt to build up readership
in the USA rather than anything necessary to the storyline.
I started the book as a light alternative to the fairly
heavy novel I had been reading, but it’s not light or a pleasure to read. So I’m
done with Philip Kerr. I’ll learn about Germany under the Nazis elsewhere.
