Countdown to the Daggers!!

Tickets are available from today (Thurs 15 Oct) for the virtual awards ceremony of the 2020 Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Daggers, which honour the very best in crime writing.

The oldest awards in the genre, the CWA Daggers have been synonymous with quality crime writing for over half a century. The awards take place live via Zoom webinar on Thursday 22 October from 7.30pm.

The night is compered by book reviewer, author and journalist Barry Forshaw, one of the UK’s leading experts on crime fiction. Guest speaker will be TV presenter and Pointless creator, Richard Osman, whose debut The Thursday Murder Club became a record-breaking Sunday Times number one bestseller.

Barry Forshaw said: “The Daggers are one of the annual highlights in the literary calendar. The crime writing and reading community is famed for its convivial events, and although virtual, we still promise an entertaining and engaging evening for these Oscars of the crime genre.”

Winners of the Daggers – including the Gold for best crime novel, the Ian Fleming Steel for best thriller, the ALCS Gold for Non-fiction, the John Creasey (New Blood) for first-time authors, and the Sapere Books Historical Dagger – will be announced on the night.

Shortlisted authors for the 10 coveted Daggers include Mick Herron, Eva Dolan, Abir Mukherjee, Casey Cep and Christopher Brookmyre. The awards also feature the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year and the Dagger in the Library, voted exclusively by librarians, chosen for the author’s body of work and support of libraries. The winner of the Debut Dagger will also be announced – a competition for unpublished writers which can lead to them securing representation and a publishing contract.

One of the UK’s most prominent societies for the promotion and promulgation of crime writing, the CWA was founded in 1953 by John Creasy; the awards started in 1955 with its first award going to Winston Graham, best known for Poldark. They are regarded by the publishing world as the foremost British awards for crime-writing.

Tickets are free, but limited. To book a place, visit:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cwa-dagger-awards-2020-tickets-123647704613

The Shortlists in Full:

GOLD DAGGER

What You Pay For by Claire Askew (Hodder & Stoughton)

November Road by Lou Berney (Harper Fiction)

Forced Confessions by John Fairfax (Little, Brown)

Joe Country by Mick Herron (John Murray)

Death in the East by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)

Good Girl, Bad Girl by Michael Robotham (Sphere)

IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER

November Road by Lou Berney (Harper Fiction)

This is Gomorrah by Tom Chatfield (Hodder & Stoughton)

One Way Out by AA Dhand (Bantam Press)

Between Two Evils by Eva Dolan(Raven Books)

Cold Storage by David Koepp (HQ)

The Whisper Man by Alex North (Michael Joseph)

JOHN CREASEY (NEW BLOOD) DAGGER

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha (Faber & Faber)

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing (Michael Joseph)

Little White Lies by Philippa East (HQ)

The Wreckage by Robin Morgan-Bentley (Trapeze)

The Man on the Street by Trevor Wood (Quercus Fiction)

SAPERE BOOKS HISTORICAL DAGGER

In Two Minds by Alis Hawkins(The Dome Press)

Metropolis by Philip Kerr (Quercus Fiction)

The Bear Pit by SG MacLean (Quercus Fiction)

Death in the East by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)

The Anarchists’ Club by Alex Reeve (Raven Books)

The Paper Bark Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu (Constable)

CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION DAGGER

Summer of Reckoning by Marion Brunet, translated by Katherine Gregor (Bitter Lemon Press)

The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre, translated by Stephanie Smee (Old Street Publishing)

Like Flies from Afar by K Ferrari, translated by Adrian Nathan West (Canongate Books)

November by Jorge Galán, translated by Jason Wilson (Constable)

The Fragility of Bodies by Sergio Olguín, translated by Miranda France (Bitter Lemon Press)

Little Siberia by Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston (Orenda Books)

SHORT STORY DAGGER

The Bully by Jeffery Deaver, in Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O’Regan (Titan Books)

The New Lad by Paul Finch, in Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O’Regan (Titan Books)

The Washing by Christopher Fowler, in Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan Books)

#Me Too by Lauren Henderson, in Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan Books)

The Recipe by Louise Jensen, in Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O’Regan (Titan Books)

Easily Made by Syd Moore, in 12 Strange Days of Christmas (Point Blank Press)

ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION

Furious Hours by Casey Cep (William Heinemann)

Corrupt Bodies by Peter Everett (Icon Books)

Honour: Achieving Justice for Banaz Mahmod by Caroline Goode (Oneworld Publications)

The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury by Sean O’Connor (Simon & Schuster)

The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking by Adam Sisman (Profile Books)

The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective by Susannah Stapleton (Picador)

DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY

Christopher Brookmyre

Jane Casey

Alex Gray

Quintin Jardine

DEBUT DAGGER

The Spae-Wife by Anna Caig

Whipstick by Leanne Fry

Pesticide by Kim Hays

Emergency Drill by Nicholas Morrish

Revolution Never Lies by Josephine Moulds

Bitter Lake by Michael Munro

PUBLISHERS’ DAGGER

Bitter Lemon Press

Harvill Secker

Head of Zeus

HQ

Michael Joseph

Orenda

Raven Books

Severn House

2020 CWA Daggers - Shortlists Announced

The 2020 shortlists for the prestigious CWA Dagger awards, which honour the very best in the crime writing genre, have been announced.

The world-famous Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Daggers are the oldest awards in the genre and have been synonymous with quality crime writing for over half a century.

Mick Herron’s Joe Country, Claire Askew’s What You Pay For and Lou Berney’s November Road are all in contention for the CWA Gold Dagger, awarded to the best crime novel. November Road is also on the shortlist for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for the best thriller, up against One Way Out by AA Dhand, Between Two Evils by Eva Dolan and the Richard and Judy pick The Whisper Man by Alex North.

Linda Stratmann, Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, said: “As the CWA Daggers are unmatched for their reputation and longevity, these shortlists offer a showcase of the finest writing in crime fiction and non-fiction. They reveal the remarkable variety and huge relevance of the genre, which continues to dominate book sales and to shape our cultural landscape.”

The much-anticipated John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger highlights the best debut novels. Among the six shortlisted debuts are Little White Lies by Philippa East, acclaimed as ‘unputdownable’, and Trevor Wood, who served in the Royal Navy for 16 years, makes the list with The Man on the Street, featuring a homeless veteran grappling with PTSD, dubbed by Lee Child as ‘an instant classic’.

Abir Mukherjee’s Death in the East is not only shortlisted for the Gold Dagger but also the Sapere Books Historical Dagger. He contends with Metropolis, completed just before Philip Kerr’s untimely death and SG Maclean, who won the Dagger last year for Destroying Angel; she returns with The Bear Pit.

The Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger shortlist features Finland’s acclaimed and award-winning writer, Antti Tuomainen, with Little Siberia translated by David Hackston. The king of Helsinki noir is up against Marion Brunet, the winner of the prestigious Grand Prix de Littérature policière in 2018, whose novel Summer of Reckoning is translated by Katherine Gregor.

The CWA Daggers are one of the few high-profile awards that honour the short story.

Syd Moore, who was shortlisted in the category in 2019, returns with her short story “Easily Made” in 12 Strange Days of Christmas. Paul Finch, a former cop and journalist turned bestselling crime writer, sees his short story “The New Lad” (published in the anthology Exit Wounds) make the shortlist. They are up against established authors including Christopher Fowler, author of over fifty novels and short-story collections, and the blockbuster American mystery writer Jeffery Deaver, who won the Short Story Dagger in 2004.

The shortlist for the ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction includes Casey Cep, a staff writer at the New York Times whose first book Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, has received acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Also on the shortlist is Caroline Goode for Honour: Achieving Justice for Banaz Mahmod. It’s the heart-breaking true story of Banaz Mahmod, the young Londoner murdered by her own family for falling in love with the wrong man, adapted for TV starring Keeley Hawes as Detective Chief Inspector Caroline Goode.

The Dagger in the Library is voted on exclusively by librarians, chosen for the author’s body of work and support of libraries. This year’s shortlisted nominees are Christopher Brookmyre, Jane Casey, Alex Gray and Quintin Jardine.

One of the anticipated highlights of the awards is the Debut Dagger competition, open to unknown and uncontracted writers. Settings for the shortlisted novels are varied and range from modern-day America, rural Australia, an organic farm near Bern, 2011 Cuba, a contemporary offshore oil platform and sixteenth century Orkney.

This year also features the Best Crime and Mystery Publisher of the Year Dagger, launched in 2019, which celebrates publishers and imprints demonstrating excellence and diversity in crime writing.

The winners of the 2020 Daggers will be announced at an awards ceremony, due to take place on 22 October.

The Shortlists in Full:

GOLD DAGGER

What You Pay For by Claire Askew (Hodder & Stoughton)

November Road by Lou Berney(Harper Fiction)

Forced Confessions by John Fairfax (Little, Brown)

Joe Country by Mick Herron (John Murray)

Death in the East by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)

Good Girl, Bad Girl by Michael Robotham (Sphere)

IAN FLEMING STEEL DAGGER

November Road by Lou Berney (Harper Fiction)

This is Gomorrah by Tom Chatfield (Hodder & Stoughton)

One Way Out by AA Dhand (Bantam Press)

Between Two Evils by Eva Dolan (Raven Books)

Cold Storage by David Koepp(HQ)

The Whisper Man by Alex North:(Michael Joseph)

JOHN CREASEY (NEW BLOOD) DAGGER

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha (Faber & Faber)

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing (Michael Joseph)

Little White Lies by Philippa East (HQ)

The Wreckage by Robin Morgan-Bentley (Trapeze)

The Man on the Street by Trevor Wood(Quercus Fiction)

SAPERE BOOKS HISTORICAL DAGGER

In Two Minds by Alis Hawkins (The Dome Press)

Metropolis by Philip Kerr(Quercus Fiction)

The Bear Pit by SG MacLean (Quercus Fiction)

Death in the East by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)

The Anarchists’ Club by Alex Reeve (Raven Books)

The Paper Bark Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu (Constable)

CRIME FICTION IN TRANSLATION DAGGER

Summer of Reckoning by Marion Brunet, translated by Katherine Gregor (Bitter Lemon Press)

The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre, translated by Stephanie Smee (Old Street Publishing)

Like Flies from Afar by K Ferrari, translated by Adrian Nathan West (Canongate Books)

November by Jorge Galán, translated by Jason Wilson (Constable)

The Fragility of Bodies by Sergio Olguín, translated by Miranda France (Bitter Lemon Press)

Little Siberia by Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston (Orenda Books)

SHORT STORY DAGGER

The Bully by Jeffery Deaver in Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O’Regan (Titan Books)

The New Lad by Paul Finch in Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O’Regan (Titan Books)

The Washing by Christopher Fowler in Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan Books)

#Me Too by Lauren Henderson in Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan Books)

The Recipe by Louise Jensen in Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B Kane and Marie O’Regan (Titan Books)

Easily Made by Syd Moore in 12 Strange Days of Christmas (Point Blank Press)

ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION

Furious Hours by Casey Cep (William Heinemann)

Corrupt Bodies by Peter Everett (Icon Books)

Honour: Achieving Justice for Banaz Mahmod by Caroline Goode (Oneworld Publications)

The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury by Sean O’Connor (Simon & Schuster)

The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking by Adam Sisman (Profile Books)

The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective by Susannah Stapleton (Picador)

DAGGER IN THE LIBRARY

Christopher Brookmyre

Jane Casey

Alex Gray

Quintin Jardine

DEBUT DAGGER

The Spae-Wife by Anna Caig

Whipstick by Leanne Fry

Pesticide by Kim Hays

Emergency Drill by Nicholas Morrish

Revolution Never Lies by Josephine Moulds

Bitter Lake by Michael Munro

PUBLISHERS’ DAGGER

Bitter Lemon Press

Harvill Secker

Head of Zeus

HQ

Michael Joseph

Orenda

Raven Books

Severn House

Barry Award Nominations 2020

Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine announced the Barry Award Nominees. The winners of this year’s Barry Awards will be announced during the Opening Ceremonies at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Sacramento, California on October 15, 2020. The nominees were chosen by panels of experts in mystery/crime fiction.  

The readers/subscribers of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine will determine by vote who wins each category.

Best Mystery/Crime Novel

The Lost Man by Jane Harper (Flatiron)
If She Wakes by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown)
Metropolis by Philip Kerr (Putnam)
The Border by Don Winslow (Harpercollins)
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha (Ecco)
Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh (Flatiron)

Best First Mystery/Crime Novel

The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup (Harper)
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (Celadon)
American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson (Random House)
Save Me From Dangerous Men by S. A. Lelchuk (Flatiron)
Scrublands by Chris Hammer (Atria)
To The Lions by Holly Watt    (Dutton)

Best Paperback Original Mystery/Crime Novel
The Godmother by Hannelore Cayre (Ecw)
Winner Kills All by R. J. Bailey (Simon & Schuster Uk)
Killing Quarry by Max Allan Collins (Hardcase Crime)
Fate by Ian Hamilton (Spiderline)
Missing Daughter by Rick Mofina (Mira)
No Good Deed by James Swain (Thomas & Mercer)

Best Thriller

Mission Critical by Mark Greaney (Berkley)
Backlash by Brad Thor (Atria/Emily Bester)
The Chain by Adrian Mckinty (Mulholland)
The Burglar by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press)
True Believer by Jack Carr (Atria/Emily Bester)
White Hot Silence by Henry Porter (Mysterious Press)

Best Mystery/Crime Novel of the Decade
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Crown)
November Road by Lou Berney (William Morrow)
Suspect by Robert Crais (Putnam)
The Dry by Jane Harper (Flatiron)
The Black House by Peter May (Quercus)
The Cartel by Don Winslow (Knopf)

Bernie Gunther’s Last Hurrah

METROPOLIS by the late PHILIP KERR, the last adventure of Bernie Gunther from Quercus Publishing was published yesterday 4^th of April 2019, and coming in a couple of days to the US and Canada from PenguinRandomHouse North America

I have been savouring it, reading it slowly, for it is a beautiful crime novel, one with writing that is so thought-provoking it makes you gasp for breath. It is a rather Dark Narrative as it details Gunther’s start with the Police, at Berlin’s Murder Squad, in 1928. What appears as the serial murder of Prostitutes by a Madman, soon morphs into an investigation of the slaying of WW 1 veterans, beggars – but becomes something more, something troubling for Bernie Gunther.

It was written under tragic circumstances, so it required from me some respect.

I finished it last night, and had trouble sleeping for it is thought provoking, as well as hugely entertaining.

Bleary-eyed, I penned my review this morning >

The last of these remarkable historical crime thrillers is aptly set at the start of Bernie Gunther’s police career with Berlin’s Murder Squad, the Kriminalpolizei. It is an origin story, as well a mirror to be held up against the political turmoil of our own contemporary times.

Above all else, it is a melancholic narrative, a reflective work that provokes deep thought in the reader as only a piece of high art can; because Philip Kerr’s final novel is just that, narrative artistry.

Berlin 1928, the Nazi regime is gathering momentum and power in a desperate nation, one humbled by that great war, the one that Bernie Gunther survived where many died in the muddy trenches, and the clouds of gas that the infantry men had to traverse.

Gunther is living in a rooming house that he shares with an overbearing landlady and assorted misfits including an Englishman named Rankin. Gunther’s detective skills have been noticed by his superiors in the Berlin Police; and so, in consequence, he finds himself promoted from the Vice Squad, to the Murder Squad.

As ever, the narrative is peppered with observations and dialogue that could have been torn from the pages of Raymond Chandler, for Bernie Gunther shares the world-weary cynicism of Philip Marlowe. There is much wit within these pages, but that is matched by the oppressive darkness of the story.

Gunther is assigned to track down a serial killer who is hunting the scalps of prostitutes, many who are women trying to earn a little money just to survive, in an economically ravaged city.  High art rubs shoulder to shoulder with the unspeakable cruelties inflicted upon the peoples of this city. There is theatre, there is cinema, music hall as well as drinking, drug taking and sexual depravity that attracts people to its dark streets, and eponymously gives this novel its title. 

Read the Full Review from Shots Magazine HERE

It was launched on Monday 25^th March at Daunt Books on the Marylebone Rd, London by Philip Kerr’s Editor Jane Wood, his wife the novelist Jane Thynne and Howard Jacobson, with their welcome recoded HERE and embedded below

It was good to meet up with friends and colleagues Ayo Onatade, Mike Ripley, Barry Forshaw and Jake Kerridge, as well as writers Henry Porter, Abir Mukherjee (and his charming wife) as well as writer and political satirist Ian Hislop among the invited guests.

We present a few photos of the event.

More Information on these novels and Bernie Gunther >

https://berniegunther.com

If you’ve not read the Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr, then this excellent link HERE acts as a primer

For many, these novels are extraordinary, the research, the characters, the backdrop(s), but most critically the writing in these thrillers is just so good, so thought provoking - these novels suck the air out of your lungs.

Though Philip Kerr wrote over 30 novels in his career, spanning many sub-genres, it will be the 14 novels that featured Bernie Gunther that he will be remembered for, his legacy as a novelist.

Miss this novel (and its 13 precursors) at your peril, for the work of Philip Kerr, and Bernie Gunther’s philosophical investigations sit at the top table of the crime fiction genre.

Shots Magazine would like to pass our thanks to Jane Wood and her colleagues at Quercus Publishing, the novelist Jane Thynne and Daunt Books for a most enjoyable if melancholic evening.

 Video and Photographs © 2019 A Karim

The Metropolis That Awaits Us

In my office, which is in fact our family dining-room (due to a change in professional circumstance), rests one solitary novel on that table’s congested surface.

I sit at one end of the dining table, back to the window, facing my PC screen, with a printer to my right, and a growing series of books, piles of novels on the left. On the table, ahead of me are my file-cards, folders, newspaper clippings, stacks of paper, my notebooks, my array of pens, stationary, thesaurus, dictionary, history books and the usual writing clutter; the ephemera for those who find joy in playing with words and the imagination.

There is one solitary novel resting on the table’s surface. It breaks my rule, the sacred rule of the novels of others, only to be resting in piles to the left of me – never on the actual table’s surface, where my own writing, my scribbled notes and ephemeral thoughts reside. That novel is about a Detective, a rule-breaker, a maverick, an outsider or stranger. The novel is entitled Metropolis, and is the last outing of Bernard [‘Bernie’] Gunther, who at times is laconic, reflective, while at other times is the wise-cracking observer of the brutal absurdity that surrounded him.

Like Gunther’s creator, the novelist Philip Kerr was also a gregarious loner, a character who was different from the others that surrounded him. Gunther was a man who juggled the horrors of the world he existed in, with wit and action, a world striated with moral ambiguity, where brutality and horror had to be confronted with violence and with intellect.

Literary Renaissance Man, Publisher, Editor and Bookseller New York’s Otto Penzler noted, that stylistically Gunther, had a legendary precursor -

[Philip] Kerr wrote the nearest pastiche to Raymond Chandler’s quintessentially American literary style yet achieved, transcending the scores—no, hundreds—who had attempted it before he did.

Read more from Otto Penzler HERE

I was in London for a few days, an escape from my Office (aka, our family dining room). I got thinking about the nervous anticipation I have for this Novel, Metropolis, the last adventure of Bernie Gunther, the final work from Philip Kerr and soon to be published posthumously. He was taken so tragically young, and at the peak of his narrative skill as a novelist. He was barely older than I; a thought that troubled me from time to time.

Those thoughts were triggered by a chance encounter over a literary lunch with Robert Goddard and Tom Bradby, hosted by Patsy Irwin and Becky Short of PenguinRandomHouse’s UK imprint Transworld. I will be detailing that extraordinary lunch in due course, but I don’t wish to digress at this point, so back on topic.

Once the lunch plates and cutlery had been cleared away, Mike Ripley and I found ourselves seated with Political Journalist / Broadcaster Tom Bradby, a familiar figure due to his career at ITN News. Some may not know that Tom Bradby is also an elegant thriller writer. So as we sipped our coffee, we got talking about thriller writing and of thriller fiction. This was in context to Bradby’s own upcoming political thriller SECRET SERVICE, a book I was currently reading, and will be reviewing before its publication on 30^th of May, 2019.

I’ve come to understand that the most elegant of thriller writers, are those who are the most well-read.

Tom Bradby is no exception.

The conversation got around to who we read, and who we consider ‘the point men and women’ in thriller writing. I mentioned to Bradby that Mike Ripley and I attended Philip Kerr’s funeral last year [which I detailed HERE]. Bradby’s eyes grew animated as he told us that he was a huge, huge fan of Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels. He’d read them all, some, several times, and then the three of us talked, and we talked, and we talked until we could talk no more about those Philip Kerr novels, those treasures that featured a former German Soldier turned Detective, called Gunther.

Tom Bradby considers those Bernie Gunther novels, like many of us, as sitting at the high table, shoulder to shoulder with the masters of the crime and thriller genre.

I told Bradby that I was apprehensive as well as eager (as counter intuitive as that may appear), to crack the spine of METROPOLIS, that novel that sat at the edge of my office desk.

It would have sounded too weird, if I told him it actually resided on our family’s dining table.

I told Bradby that I had just read a truly emotional as well as insightful essay, by the novelist Jane Thynne, Phil Kerr’s wife. It details much about what that last salute to Bernie Gunther had in store for its readers, from the pen of Philip Kerr, and I urged him to look it up.

It Began -

In July 2017, in the inappropriately sunny office of a London cancer clinic, Phil learned that he had stage 4 metastatic cancer and it was incurable. With characteristic courage he asked the doctor how long he had. Between one and two years, she suggested. Plainly keen to impart more optimistic news, she volunteered that she had once, in a long career, known a single patient at the same stage live for five years.

When we got into the car, Phil exhaled. ‘So I’ve got five years.’ In the event, he had eight months.

Read the full essay from Jane Thynne HERE

Later I found myself seated on a bench in Soho Square, with coffee, with pages of  notes, with a shoulder-bag full of books - and only pigeons at my feet for company.

I was alone with my thoughts. I thought of Philip Kerr, a man I didn’t know that well, apart from snatched conversations at book launches and over shared drinks at literary events. I thought that we rarely know these loners, for they hide themselves in plain sight, masking themselves as characters in what they write, in their novels. Philip Kerr was such a man, solitary, but also larger-than-life [as counter-intuitive as that sounds].

I did get to know his character Bernie Gunther rather well, from my reading over the years, commencing with March Violets.

Philip Kerr and I shared one strand that was common in our lives, it was one that marked us out as different from the others, back when we were schooled, he in private education, while I sat within the public system. However, in both our childhood situations, we were clearly visible as being ‘different’ – not unlike the character Philip Kerr would create, that loner, that fish-out-of-water, Bernie Gunther.

I recall talking with Kerr, discussing his tough school experiences [which he widely recounted] and that I considered became character traits, visible in Bernie Gunther, which would always make him smile, as he had a love-hate relationship with his creation, the outsider, the stranger who does not fit into the world he finds himself in, and is not accepted; a feeling I too share, from time to time.

Read More about my reflections HERE and from Jeff Pierce, in a most detailed and very rare interview with Philip Kerr HERE

So, as I took a break from Tom Bradby’s novel SECRET SERVICE, on that park-bench in Soho Square; I thought of that one novel that sat on my family dining table, Metropolis; the last hurrah for Bernard Gunther.

Philip Kerr treats readers to his beloved hero’s origins, exploring Bernie Gunther’s first weeks on Berlin’s Murder Squad.

A portrait of Bernie Gunther in his twenties: He’s young, but he’s seen four bloody years of trench warfare. And he’s not stupid. So when he receives a promotion and a ticket out of Vice squad, he knows he’s not really leaving behind the criminal gangs, the perverse sex clubs, and the laundry list of human corruption. It’s 1928 and Berlin is a city on the edge of chaos, where nothing is truly verboten. But soon a new wave of shockingly violent murders sweeps up society’s most vulnerable, prostitutes and wounded ex-soldiers begging on the streets.

As Bernie Gunther sets out to make sense of multiple murders with different MOs in a city that knows no limits, he must face the fact that his own police HQ is not immune. The Nazi party has begun to infiltrate the Alex, Berlin’s central office, just as the shaky Weimar government makes a last, desperate attempt to control a nation edging toward to the Third Reich.

It seems like the only escape for most Berliners is the theatre and Bernie’s no exception. As he gets deeper into the city’s sordid underground network, he seeks comfort with a make-up artist who is every bit a match for his quick wit and increasingly sardonic view of the world. But even this space can’t remain untouched, not with this pervasive feeling that everything is for sale in Berlin if you’re man enough to kill for it.

So as METROPOLIS arrives on 4^th April 2019 from Quercus Publishing in the UK and Ireland, and on April 9^th 2019 from PenguinRandomHouse in the US and Canada, I hope you will join me, and the millions of other readers in discovering Philip Kerr’s last novel, a journey into the past, to see a young Bernie Gunther – as portrayed in the novel METROPOLIS, the one that sits at the far edge of our family dining table; now my office, waiting for me, to read and to review, with my personal commentary.

If you’ve not discovered the work of Philip Kerr, I’d suggest clicking THIS LINK, and ordering MARCH VIOLETS and pre-ordering METROPOLIS - the Alpha and the Omega of Bernie Gunther, created by a writer named Philip Kerr.

I notice it’s Valentine’s Day, so my words are surreally apt when I talk of Bernie Gunther on this particularly sunny day. It is a day that despite the warmth of the Sun on my face, it feels melancholic within, and that is not counter-intuitive. 

Ali Karim, 14^th February 2019

Postscript 

Have a fine day in these politically confusing times. I’ll end with a line that indicates the possible truth a novelist can bring to bear to the surface of our reality, to provoke thought in matters that perplex.

 “I didn’t know you were interested in politics,’ I said. ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘But isn’t that how Hitler got elected in the first place: too many people who didn’t give a shit who was running the country?” 

Philip Kerr

Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem

Philip Kerr treats readers to his beloved hero’s origins, exploring Bernie Gunther’s first weeks on Berlin’s Murder Squad.

A portrait of Bernie Gunther in his twenties: He’s young, but he’s seen four bloody years of trench warfare. And he’s not stupid. So when he receives a promotion and a ticket out of Vice squad, he knows he’s not really leaving behind the criminal gangs, the perverse sex clubs, and the laundry list of human corruption. It’s 1928 and Berlin is a city on the edge of chaos, where nothing is truly verboten. But soon a new wave of shockingly violent murders sweeps up society’s most vulnerable, prostitutes and wounded ex-soldiers begging on the streets.

As Bernie Gunther sets out to make sense of multiple murders with different MOs in a city that knows no limits, he must face the fact that his own police HQ is not immune. The Nazi party has begun to inflitrate the Alex, Berlin’s central office, just as the shakey Weimar government makes a last, desperate attempt to control a nation edging toward to the Third Reich.

It seems like the only escape for most Berliners is the theater and Bernie’s no exception. As he gets deeper into the city’s sordid underground network, he seeks comfort with a make-up artist who is every bit a match for his quick wit and increasingly sardonic view of the world. But even this space can’t remain untouched, not with this pervasive feeling that everything is for sale in Berlin if you’re man enough to kill for it.

SEE LESS

Books to Look Forward to From Quercus

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January 2019

A breath-taking missing persons thriller set under the menacing peaks of the Pyrenees.  Five years after their disappearance, the village of Monteperdido still mourns the loss of Ana and Lucia, two eleven-year-old friends who left school one afternoon and were never seen again. Now, Ana reappears unexpectedly inside a crashed car, wounded but alive.  The case reopens and a race against time begins to discover who was behind the girls' kidnapping. Most importantly, where is Lucia and is she still alive?  Inspector Sara Campos and her boss Santiago Bain, from Madrid's head office, are forced to work with the local police. Five years ago fatal mistakes were made in the investigation conducted after the girls first vanished, and this mustn't happen again. But Monteperdido has rules of its own.  Village of the Lost Girls is by Agustín Martínez.

A reporter with no fear - Brussels, 1979. Jaded Edinburgh journalist Neil Bannerman arrives in the capital of European politics intent on digging up dirt. Yet it is danger he discovers, when two British men are found murdered.  A child with no father - One victim is a journalist, the other a Cabinet Minister: the double-assassination witnessed by the former's autistic daughter. This girl recalls every detail about her father's killer - except for one.  The man with no face - With Brussels rocked by the tragedy, Bannerman is compelled to follow his instincts. He is now fighting to expose a murderous conspiracy, protect a helpless child, and unmask a remorseless killer.  The Man With No Face is by Peter May.

A Long Night in Paris is by Dov Aflon. When an Israeli tech entrepreneur disappears from Charles de Gaulle airport with a woman in red, logic dictates youthful indiscretion. But Israel is on a state of high alert nonetheless. Colonel Zeev Abadi, the new head of Unit 8200's autonomous Special Section, who just happens to be in Paris, also just happens to have arrived on the same flight.  For Commissaire Leger of the Paris Police coincidences have their reasons, and most are suspect. When a second young Israeli is kidnapped soon after arriving on the same flight, this time at gunpoint from his hotel room, his suspicions are confirmed - and a diplomatic incident looms.  Back in Tel Aviv, Lieutenant Oriana Talmor, Abadi's deputy, is his only ally, applying her sharp wits to the race to identify the victims and the reasons behind their abduction. In Paris a covert Chinese commando team listens to the investigation unfurl and watches from the rooftops. While by the hour the morgue receives more bodies from the river and the city's arrondissements.  The clock has been set. And this could be a long night in the City of Lights.

February 2019

Fight Back is by Anna Smith.  Kerry Casey is now a fully-fledged gangland boss. With her business partner Sharon and her wily lawyer Marty at her side, she is busy ridding her organisation of the drug-dealing, people-trafficking scum her dead brother Mickey got them involved with. But her great dream is still to take the Casey’s straight.  Her plan to turn her organisation around hinges on building a property empire in Spain. But Kerry has some deadly rivals - in Glasgow, on the Costa del Sol, and even further afield. They will never believe she has what it takes to defend her turf, and they won't rest until the Casey’s are destroyed.  When her enemies strike at the heart of the Casey family, Kerry must prepare for the fight of her life - for her business, her friends and her own survival.

The Stone Circle is by Elly Griffiths.  DCI Nelson has been receiving threatening letters telling him to 'go to the stone circle and rescue the innocent who is buried there'. He is shaken, not only because children are very much on his mind, with Michelle's baby due to be born, but because although the letters are anonymous, they are somehow familiar. They read like the letters that first drew him into the case of The Crossing Places, and to Ruth. But the author of those letters is dead. Or are they?  Meanwhile Ruth is working on a dig in the Saltmarsh - another henge, known by the archaeologists as the stone circle - trying not to think about the baby. Then bones are found on the site, and identified as those of Margaret Lacey, a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared thirty years ago.  As the Margaret Lacey case progresses, more and more aspects of it begin to hark back to that first case of The Crossing Places, and to Scarlett Henderson, the girl Nelson couldn't save. The past is reaching out for Ruth and Nelson, and its grip is deadly.

 

Death stalked the Vale.  In every corner, every whisper.  They just didn't know it yet.  Six neighbours, six secrets, six reasons to want Olive Collins dead.  In the exclusive gated community of Withered Vale, people's lives appear as perfect as their beautifully manicured lawns. Money, success, privilege - the residents have it all. Life is good.  There's just one problem.  Olive Collins' dead body has been rotting inside number four for the last three months. Her neighbours say they're shocked at the discovery but nobody thought to check on her when she vanished from sight.  The police start to ask questions and the seemingly flawless facade begins to crack. Because, when it comes to Olive's neighbours, it seems each of them has something to hide, something to lose and everything to gain from her death.  Dirty Little Secrets is by Jo Spain.

To Kill The Truth is by Sam Bourne.  Someone is trying to destroy the evidence of history's greatest crimes.  Academics and Holocaust survivors dead in mysterious circumstances. Museums and libraries burning. Digital records and irreplaceable proofs, lost for ever.  Former White House operative Maggie Costello has sworn off politics. But when the Governor of Virginia seeks her help to stop the lethal spiral of killings, she knows that this is bigger than any political game.  As Black Lives Matter protestors clash with slavery deniers, America is on a knife-edge and time is running out. This deadly conspiracy could ignite a new Civil War - but who stands to gain most from the chaos?

March 2019

Even the deepest buried secrets can find their way to the surface...  Moments before she dies, Nicola's grandmother Betty whispers to her that there are babies at the bottom of the garden.  Nicola's mother claims she was talking nonsense. However, when Nicola's daughter finds a bone while playing in Betty's garden, it's clear that something sinister has taken place.  But will unearthing painful family secrets end up tearing Nicola's family apart? The Last Thing She Told Me is by Linda Green.

The Burning House is by Neil Spring.  It was a victimless crime...  Estate Agent Clara is struggling to make a sale. With her abusive ex-husband on the brink of finding where she's hiding, she needs to make a commission soon or lose her chance to escape.  Boleskine House on the shores of Loch Ness has remained unsold for years, and Clara is sure that an 'innocent' fire will force the price down. But the perfect crime soon turns into the perfect nightmare: there was a witness, a stranger in the village, and he's not going to let Clara get away with it that easily...

Beautiful Bad is by Annie Ward.  Maddie and Ian's romance began when he was serving in the British Army and she was a travel writer visiting her best friend Jo in Europe. Now sixteen years later, married with a beautiful son, Charlie, they are living the perfect suburban life in Middle America.  But when an accident leaves Maddie badly scarred, she begins attending therapy, where she gradually reveals her fears about Ian's PTSD; her concerns for the safety of their young son Charlie; and the couple's tangled and tumultuous past with Jo.  From the Balkans to England, Iraq to Manhattan, and finally to an ordinary family home in Kansas, the years of love and fear, adventure and suspicion culminate in The Day of the Killing, when a frantic 911 call summons the police to the scene of shocking crime.

Prefecture D is by Hideo Yokoyama. A collection of four novellas: each taking place in 1998, each set in the world of Six Four, and each centring around a mystery and the unfortunate officer tasked with solving it.  Season of Shadows - "The force could lose face . . . I want you to fix this." Personnel's Futawatari receives a horrifying memo forcing him to investigate the behaviour of a legendary detective with unfinished business.  Cry of the Earth - "It's too easy to kill a man with a rumour." Shinto of Internal Affairs receives an anonymous tipoff alleging a Station Chief is visiting the red-light district -- a warning he soon learns is a red herring.  Black Lines - "It was supposed to be her special day." Section Chief Nanao, responsible for the force's 49 female officers, is alarmed to learn her star pupil has not reported for duty, and is believed to be missing.  Briefcase - "We need to know what he's going to ask." On the eve of a routine debate, Political Liaison Tsuge learns a wronged politician is preparing his revenge. He must now quickly dig up dirt to silence him.  Prefecture D continues Hideo Yokoyama's exploration of the themes of obsession, saving face, office politics and inter-departmental conflicts. Placing everyday characters between a rock and a hard place and then dialling up the pressure, he blends and balances the very Japanese with the very accessible, to spectacular effect.

A murdered diplomat, planted evidence and a treacherous sister: once again, Helga had better find the real killer quickly, before heads start rolling - literally - in this brand-new Viking noir mystery.  Helga Finnsdottir left her foster parents, the old Viking chieftain Unnthor Reginson and his knowing wife Hildigunnur, to see the world, but she stopped in Uppsala when she fell in love. Now she's established herself as a local healer and herb-woman on the outskirts of town, and life is good - until King Eirik the Victorious calls a trade council and hairy northerners and southern Swedes alike descend on the town.  Unfortunately for Helga, one delegation is headed by a very determined young woman who has her own agenda and will let nothing - and no one - get in her way. But the last time Helga saw Jorunn Unthorsdottir, her foster-sister was being cast out by their father for killing their brother Bjorn and trying to pin the blame on Helga.  So perhaps it's no great surprise when one of the delegates is murdered, or that Helga's soon tagged as the lead suspect. It doesn't take her long to clear her own name, but that only leads suspicion to fall on to her man.  Once again, Helga must solve a murder, and fast, before the innocent pays with his head.  The Council is by Snorri Kristjansson.

April 2019

Berlin, 1928, the dying days of the Weimar Republic shortly before Hitler and the Nazis came to power. It was a period of decadence and excess as Berliners - after the terrible slaughter of WWI and the hardships that followed - are enjoying their own version of Babylon. Bernie is a young detective working in Vice when he gets a summons from Bernard Weiss, Chief of Berlin's Criminal Police. He invites Bernie to join KIA - Criminal Inspection A - the supervisory body for all homicide investigation in Kripo. Bernie's first task is to investigate the Silesian Station killings - four prostitutes murdered in as many weeks. All of them have been hit over the head with a hammer and then scalped with a sharp knife.  Bernie hardly has time to acquaint himself with the case files before another prostitute is murdered. Until now, no one has shown much interest in these victims - there are plenty in Berlin who'd like the streets washed clean of such degenerates. But this time the girl's father runs Berlin's foremost criminal ring, and he's prepared to go to extreme lengths to find his daughter's killer.  Then a second series of murders begins - of crippled wartime veterans who beg in the city's streets. It seems that someone is determined to clean up Berlin of anyone less than perfect. The voice of Nazism is becoming a roar that threatens to drown out all others. But not Bernie Gunther's ...  Metropolis is by Philip Kerr.

As an ex-SAS officer, Aubrey Savage is used to noticing small things. So when he offers a lift to a terrified runaway bride on the moors, he knows that there is more to her story than meets the eye.  But when she is snatched away immediately, leaving behind a holdall and Glock, he is thrust into a terrifying world of corruption, and a threat that is all too close to home.  In High Places is by JJ Holland.

Murder convict Sean Hennessy is released from prison to return to a seaside community in Dublin. He has always professed his innocence. But within months of his release, two bodies appear in the peaceful suburb of Clontarf.  With a TV documentary pushing the public's sympathies in Hennessy's direction, the original evidence against him is called into question and Detective Frankie Sheehan finds herself doubting her original analysis of the case.  But when another, fresh victim connects the two cases and the threat closes in around her family, Sheehan must look deep within herself in order to spot the killer who hides in plain sight.  The Killer in Me is by Olivia Kiernan.

May 2019

You Can Run - The two boys never fitted in. Seventeen, the worst age, nothing to do but smoke weed; at least they have each other. The day they speed off on a moped with a stolen mobile, they're ready to celebrate their luck at last. Until their victim comes looking for what's his - and ready to kill for it.  You Can Hide - On the other side of Kent's wealth divide, DS Alexandra Cupidi faces the strangest murder investigation of her career. A severed limb, hidden inside a modern sculpture in Margate's Turner Contemporary. No one takes it seriously - not even the artwork's owners, celebrity dealers who act like they're above the law.  You Can Die - But as Cupidi's case becomes ever more sinister, as she wrangles with police politics and personal dilemmas, she can't help worrying about those runaway boys. Seventeen, the same age as her own headstrong daughter. Alone, on the marshes, they're pawns in someone else's game. Two worlds are about to collide.  Dungeness is by William Shaw.

The Carrier is by Mattias Berg.  Erasmus Levine has a job like no other.  He travels with the President of the United States at all times, and holds in his hands the power to obliterate life

as we know it. He is the man with the nuclear briefcase, part of a crack team of top-secret operatives established after 9/11 and led by a man codenamed Edelweiss. But even Edelweiss does not know the identity of their ultimate authority, known only as Sysboss.  Levine has a secret.  For twelve years he has been receiving cryptic messages from Sysboss - an elaborate communication that began with the words We two against the world. Slowly but surely, Levine begins thinking of escape. His chance comes during an official visit to Sweden, when the alarm sounds in Stockholm's Grand Hotel.  But Sysboss has other plans for him.  From their first meeting in a network of tunnels and bunkers beneath the city, Levine is drawn into a plan to eliminate the world's nuclear arsenals. But how can he be sure that controlled demolition is the endgame? Could he be working towards a controlled apocalypse, a doomsday plot to wipe humanity from the face of the earth?

June 2019

The Body in the Castle Well is by Martin Walker.  A rich American art student is found dead at the bottom of a well in an ancient hilltop castle. The young woman, Claudia, had been working in the archives of an eminent French art historian, a crippled Resistance war hero, at his art-filled chateau.  As Claudia's White House connections get the US Embassy and the FBI involved, Bruno traces the people and events that led to her death - or was it murder?  Bruno learns that Claudia had been trying to buy the chateau and art collection of her tutor, even while her researches led her to suspect that some of his attributions may have been forged. This takes Bruno down a trail that leads him from the ruins of Berlin in 1945, to France's colonial war in Algeria.  The long arm of French history has reached out to find a new victim, but can Bruno identify the killer - and prove his case?

Life for Paul Samson has gone downhill since he last saw Denis Hisami. His luck on the turf has run out and, broke and a little desperate, he has accepted a dangerous assignment searching for a missing American businessman in Russia. Then he receives a call from Hisami asking him for a meeting.  Hisami has a bombshell to drop: Anastasia Christakos, the third member of the unlikely trio who searched for Naji 'Firefly' Touma across the Balkans three years ago, has been kidnapped, and Hisami wants Samson to find her. Given that Anastasia recently left Samson for Hisami, it's a bold request, but Samson is unable to say no.  It soon becomes clear that Anastasia is being held by parties with Russian connections in order to manipulate Hisami's business dealings. Is there a connection to Hisami's early business dealings, or even to actions taken by Hisami twenty five years before when he was a member Kurdish special-forces and intelligence? It will take all of Samson's courage and guile to find out - and meanwhile the life of the only woman he has ever loved hangs in the balance.  White Hot Silence is by Henry Porter.

Carey Logan - She was the genius wild child of the New York art scene, and my idol.  Fake - I was a no-name painter from the Florida backwater, clawing my way into their world.  Like - When she died, she left a space that couldn't be filled. Except, maybe, by Me - Everything that gets created destroys something else.  When a fire rips through her studio and burns the seven enormous paintings for her next exhibition, a young, no-name painter is left with an impossible task: recreate her art in just three months - or ruin her fledgling career. Thirty-four, single and homeless, she desperately secures a place at an exclusive upstate retreat. Brimming with creative history and set on a sparkling black lake, Pine City and its founders - a notorious collective of successful artists - is what she's idolized all her life. She's dreamt of the parties, the celebrities, the privilege. What she finds is a ghost of its former self.  The recent suicide of founding member Carey Logan haunts everyone, lurking beneath the surface like a shipwreck. And one thought begins to shadow her every move - what really happened to her hero?  Fake Like Me is by Barbara Bourland.