Most Popular Books by Philip Kerr

''One of the greatest anti-heroes ever written'' LEE CHILD Bernie Gunther has learned the hard way that it isn''t possible to distinguish ''the one from the other''. The cynical P.I. sees through the deceit and hypocrisy of both friend and foe - a lifesaving skill in postwar Germany. Munich, 1949 is home to all the backstabbing intrigue that prospers in the aftermath of war. A place where a private eye can find a lot of not-quite-reputable work: cleaning up the Nazi past of well-to-do locals, abetting fugitives in the flight abroad, sorting out rival claims to stolen goods. It''s work that fills Bernie with disgust - but it also fills his sorely depleted wallet. Then a woman seeks him out. Her husband has disappeared. She''s not looking to get him back - he''s a wanted man who ran one of the most vicious concentration camps in Poland. She just wants confirmation that he''s dead. It''s a simple enough job. But in post-war Germany, nothing is simple... ******************************* PRAISE FOR THE BERNIE GUNTHER SERIES ''Kerr''s novels are modern classics'' SIMON SEBAG-MONTEFIORE ''Pure Chandler. Powerful and impressive'' OBSERVER ''Kerr leads us through the facts of history and the vagaries of human nature'' TOM HANKS ''One of the greatest master story-tellers in English'' ALAN FURST ''One of the most memorable and original characters'' THE SUNDAY TIMES ''Bitterly, darkly funny'' SUNDAY HERALD

Former detective and reluctant SS officer Bernie Gunther must infiltrate a brutal world of spies, partisan terrorists, and high-level traitors in this “clever and compelling”(The Daily Beast) New York Times bestseller from Philip Kerr. Berlin, 1941. Bernie is back from the Eastern Front, once again working homicide in Berlin''s Kripo and answering to Reinhard Heydrich, a man he both detests and fears. Heydrich has been newly named Reichsprotector of Czechoslovakia. Tipped off that there is an assassin in his midst, he orders Bernie to join him at his country estate outside Prague, where he has invited some of the Third Reich''s most odious officials to celebrate his new appointment. One of them is the would-be assassin. Bernie can think of better ways to spend a beautiful autumn weekend, but, as he says, “You don''t say no to Heydrich and live.”

Now in one volume—the first three novels in Philip Kerr’s New York Times bestselling historical mystery series starring hard-boiled detective Bernie Gunther... “A Chandleresque knight errant caught in insane historical surroundings. Bernie walks down streets so mean that nobody can stay alive and remain truly clean.”—John Powers, Fresh Air (NPR) Ex-policeman Bernie Gunther thought he''d seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison... This collection includes: MARCH VIOLETS THE PALE CRIMINAL A GERMAN REQUIEM

Hard-boiled detective Bernie Gunther takes on a depraved serial killer terrorizing 1930''s Berlin in the second gripping mystery in Philip Kerr’s New York Times bestselling series. In the sweltering summer heat wave of 1938, the German people anxiously await the outcome of the Munich conference, wondering whether Hitler will plunge Europe into another war. Meanwhile, private investigator Bernie Gunther has taken on two cases involving blackmail. The first victim is a rich widow. The second is Bernie himself. Having been caught framing an innocent Jew for a series of vicious murders, the Kripo—the Berlin criminal police—are intent on locating the real killer and aren''t above blackmailing their former colleague to get the job done. Temporarily promoted to the rank of Kommissar, Bernie sets out to solve the dual mysteries and begins an investigation that will expose him to the darkest depths of humanity...

From New York Times-bestselling author Philip Kerr, the much anticipated return of Bernie Gunther in a series hailed by The Daily Beast as "the best crime novels around today." Once I''d been a good detective in Kripo, but that was a while ago, before the criminals wore smart gray uniforms and nearly everyone locked up was innocent." Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers. The war is over. Bernie Gunther, our sardonic former Berlin homicide detective and unwilling SS officer, is now living on the French Riviera. It is 1956 and Bernie is the go-to guy at the Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat, the man you turn to for touring tips or if you need a fourth for bridge. As it happens, a local writer needs just that, someone to fill the fourth seat in a regular game that is the usual evening diversion at the Villa Mauresque. Not just any writer. Perhaps the richest and most famous living writer in the world: W. Somerset Maugham. And it turns out it is not just a bridge partner that he needs; it''s some professional advice. Maugham is being blackmailed--perhaps because of his unorthodox lifestyle. Or perhaps because of something in his past, because once upon a time, Maugham worked for the British secret service, and the people now blackmailing him are spies. As Gunther fans know, all roads lead back to the viper''s nest that was Hitler''s Third Reich and to the killing fields that spread like a disease across Europe. Even in 1956, peace has not come to the continent: now the Soviets have the H-bomb and spies from every major power feel free to make all of Europe their personal playground.

When his cover is blown, former Berlin bull and unwilling SS officer Bernie Gunther must re-enter a cat-and-mouse game that continues to shadow his life a decade after Germany''s defeat in World War 2... The French Riviera, 1956: Bernie''s old and dangerous adversary Erich Mielke, deputy head of the East German Stasi, has turned up in Nice--and he''s not on holiday. Mielke is calling in a debt and wants Bernie to travel to London to poison a female agent they''ve both had dealings with. But Bernie isn''t keen on assassinating anyone. In an attempt to dodge his Stasi handler--former Kripo comrade Friedrich Korsch--Bernie bolts for the German border. Traveling by night and hiding by day, he has plenty of time to recall the last case he and Korsch worked together... Obersalzberg, Germany, 1939: A low-level bureaucrat has been found dead at Hitler''s mountaintop retreat in Bavaria. Bernie and Korsch have one week to find the killer before the leader of the Third Reich arrives to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. Bernie knows it would mean disaster if Hitler discovers a shocking murder has been committed on the terrace of his own home. But Obersalzberg is also home to an elite Nazi community, meaning an even bigger disaster for Bernie if his investigation takes aim at one of the party''s higher-ups... 1939 and 1956: two different eras about to converge in an explosion Bernie Gunther will never forget.

Detective Bernie Gunther navigates two corrupt regimes in this “richly satisfying mystery...that evokes the noir sensibilities of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald while breaking new ground of its own”(Los Angeles Times). Berlin, 1934. Former policeman Bernie Gunther, now a hotel detective, finds himself caught between warring factions of the Nazi apparatus as Hitler and Avery Brundage, the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, connive to soft-pedal Nazi anti-Semitism before the 1936 Olympiad... Havana, 1954. Batista, aided by the CIA, has just seized power; Castro is in prison; and the American Mafia is gaining a stranglehold on Cuba’s exploding gaming and prostitution industries. Bernie, after being kicked out of Buenos Aires, has resurfaced with a relatively peaceful new life. But he discovers that he cannot truly outrun his past when he collides with an old love and a vicious killer from his Berlin days...

In this Edgar® Award-nominated novel in Philip Kerr’s New York Times bestselling series, former detective and unwilling SS officer Bernie Gunther is on the hunt for a beautiful femme fatale... Berlin, 1942. Three players take the stage. The first, a gorgeous actress—the rising star of a giant German film company controlled by the Propaganda Ministry. The second, the very clever, very dangerous Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels—a close confidant of Hitler, ambitious schemer, and flagrant libertine. Finally, there''s Bernie Gunther—a former Berlin homicide bull now forced to run errands at the Propaganda Minister’s command. When Goebbels tasks Bernie with finding the woman the press have dubbed “the German Garbo,” his errand takes him from Zurich to Zagreb to the killing fields of Croatia. It is there that Bernie finds himself in a world of mindless brutality where everyone has a hidden agenda—perfect territory for a true cynic whose instinct is to trust no one.

The New York Times bestselling author of the Bernie Gunther novels reimagines the end of World War 2 in this gripping standalone spy thriller. Autumn 1943. Since Stalingrad, Hitler has known that Germany cannot win the war. The upcoming Allied conference in Teheran will set the ground rules for their second front-and for the peace to come. Realizing that the unconditional surrender FDR has demanded will leave Germany in ruins, Hitler has put out peace feelers. (Unbeknownst to him, so has Himmler, who is ready to stage a coup in order to reach an accord.) FDR and Stalin are willing to negotiate. Only Churchill refuses to listen. At the center of this high-stakes game of deals and doubledealing is Willard Mayer, an OSS operative who has been chosen by FDR to serve as his envoy. A cool, self-absorbed, emotionally distant womanizer with a questionable past, Mayer has embraced the stylish philosophy of the day, in which no values are fixed. He is the perfect foil for the steamy world of deception, betrayals, and assassinations that make up the moral universe of realpolitik. With his sure hand for pacing, his firm grasp of historical detail, and his explosively creative imagination about what might have been, Philip Kerr has fashioned a totally convincing thinking man’s thriller in the great tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.

Bernie Gunther enters a dangerous battleground when he investigates crimes on the Eastern Front at the height of World War 2 in this gripping historical mystery from New York Times bestselling author Philip Kerr. Berlin, 1943. A month has passed since Stalingrad. Though Hitler insists Germany is winning the war, morale is low and commanders on the ground know better. Then Berlin learns of a Red massacre of Polish troops near Smolensk, Russia. In a rare instance of agreement, both the Wehrmacht and Propaganda Minister Goebbels want irrefutable evidence of this Russian atrocity. And so Bernie Gunther is dispatched. In Smolensk, Bernie finds an enclave of Prussian aristocrats who look down at the wise-cracking, rough-edged Berlin bull. But Bernie doesn’t care about fitting in. He only wants to uncover the identity of a savage killer—before becoming a victim himself.

I swore not to tell this story while Newton was still alive. 1696, young Christopher Ellis is sent to the Tower of London, but not as a prisoner. Though Ellis is notoriously hotheaded and was caught fighting an illegal duel, he arrives at the Tower as assistant to the renowned scientist Sir Isaac Newton. Newton is Warden of the Royal Mint, which resides within the Tower walls, and he has accepted an appointment from the King of England and Parliament to investigate and prosecute counterfeiters whose false coins threaten to bring down the shaky, war-weakened economy. Ellis may lack Newton’s scholarly mind, but he is quick with a pistol and proves himself to be an invaluable sidekick and devoted apprentice to Newton as they zealously pursue these criminals. While Newton and Ellis investigate a counterfeiting ring, they come upon a mysterious coded message on the body of a man killed in the Lion Tower, as well as alchemical symbols that indicate this was more than just a random murder. Despite Newton’s formidable intellect, he is unable to decipher the cryptic message or any of the others he and Ellis find as the body count increases within the Tower complex. As they are drawn into a wild pursuit of the counterfeiters that takes them from the madhouse of Bedlam to the squalid confines of Newgate prison and back to the Tower itself, Newton and Ellis discover that the counterfeiting is only a small part of a larger, more dangerous plot, one that reaches to the highest echelons of power and nobility and threatens much more than the collapse of the economy. Dark Matter is the lastest masterwork of suspense from Philip Kerr, the internationally bestselling and brilliantly innovative thriller writer who has dazzled readers with his imaginative, fast-paced novels. Like An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose, and Kerr’s own Berlin Noir trilogy, Dark Matter is historical mystery at its finest, an extraordinary, suspense-filled journey through the shadowy streets and back alleys of London with the brilliant Newton and his faithful protégé. The haunted Tower with its bloody history is the perfect backdrop for this richly satisfying tale, one that introduces an engrossing mystery into the volatile mix of politics, science, and religion that characterized life in seventeenth-century London.

"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"--

In an ice cave high on a forbidden Himalayan mountaintop, renegade climber Jack Furness unearths a perfectly preserved skull, a fossil that may be the missing link and the scientific discovery of the century. To Berkeley paleoanthropologist Stella Swift, the miraculous find warrants an immediate expedition up the mountain''s treacherous Fish Tail Peak. But with neighboring Pakistan and India on the brink of nuclear catastrophe, the Pentagon and the GA have their own designs on the remote site. Now, they''re all about to enter a domain where one of nature''s fiercest creations has thrived for millions of years -- and modern man was never meant to be.

"Kalinka, a Ukrainian Jewish girl on the run from the Nazis, finds unlikely help from two rare Przewalski horses"--

This Edgar® Award-nominated novel in Philip Kerr’s New York Times bestselling Bernie Gunther series reveals the cynical, hard-boiled detective’s harrowing history as an unwilling SS officer in World War 2. During his eleven years working homicide in Berlin''s Kripo, Bernie Gunther learned a thing or two about evil. Then he set himself up as a private detective—until 1940 when Heydrich dragooned him into the SS''s field gray uniform and the bloodbath that was the Eastern Front. Spanning twenty-five tumultuous years, Field Gray strides across the killing fields of Europe, landing Bernie in a divided Germany at the height of the Cold War—revealing a treacherous world where the ends justify the means and no one can be trusted...

WELCOME TO THE MOST INGENIOUS BUILDING EVER DESIGNED. NOW TRY TO GET OUT ALIVE... In downtown Los Angeles it stands as a monument to man''s genius--a glittering, high-tech office tower that washes its own windows, purifies its own air, and even knows which of its employees is using drugs. But now, the building known as the Gridiron has turned malevolent. And its first victim is about to die. From its hardware-jammed computer room on the fourth floor to the 300-foot-high tree that rises in tis atrium, the Gridiron for the men and women trapped inside, there is only one way out: through the raw, human will to survive.