Most Popular Books by Philip Kerr

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

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...

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.

"[Metropolis is] a perfect goodbye--and first hello--to its hero...Bernie Gunther has, at last, come home."--Washington Post New York Times-bestselling author Philip Kerr treats readers to his beloved hero''s origins, exploring Bernie Gunther''s first weeks on Berlin''s Murder Squad. Summer, 1928. Berlin, a city where nothing is verboten. In the night streets, political gangs wander, looking for fights. Daylight reveals a beleaguered populace barely recovering from the postwar inflation, often jobless, reeling from the reparations imposed by the victors. At central police HQ, the Murder Commission has its hands full. A killer is on the loose and though he scatters many clues, each is a dead end. It''s almost as if he is taunting the cops. Meanwhile, the press is having a field day. This is what Bernie Gunther finds on his first day with the Murder Commisson. He''s been taken on beacuse the people at the top have noticed him--they think he has the makings of a first-rate detective. But not just yet. Right now, he has to listen and learn. Metropolis, completed just before Philip Kerr''s untimely death, is the capstone of a fourteen-book journey through the life of Kerr''s signature character, Bernhard Genther, a sardonic and wisecracking homicide detective caught up in an increasingly Nazified Berlin police department. In many ways, it is Bernie''s origin story and, as Kerr''s last novel, it is also, alas, his end. Metropolis is also a tour of a city in chaos: of its seedy sideshows and sex clubs, of the underground gangs that run its rackets, and its bewildered citizens--the lost, the homeless, the abandoned. It is Berlin as it edges toward the new world order that Hitler will soo usher in. And Bernie? He''s a quick study and he''s learning a lot. Including, to his chagrin, that when push comes to shove, he isn''t much better than the gangsters in doing whatever her must to get what he wants.

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.”

When Bernie Gunther takes on a blackmail case and gets involved in the affairs of British spies, the former detective risks exposing his own dark past in this thrilling novel hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “one of Kerr’s best.” Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, 1956. Having gone into hiding in the French Riviera, Bernie Gunther is working as a concierge at the Grand-Hôtel under a false name. His days and nights consist of maneuvering drunks to their rooms, shooing away prostitutes in search of trade, and answering the mindless questions posed by the absurdly rich guests—needless to say, he’s miserable. Now, the man who was once a homicide detective and unwilling SS officer in Hitler’s Third Reich is simply the person you turn to for touring tips or if you need a bridge partner. As it just so happens, a rich and famous writer needs someone to fill the fourth seat in a regular game at the Villa Mauresque. But Somerset Maugham wants Bernie to help him get out of a game far more dangerous than bridge. Maugham is being blackmailed—perhaps because of his unorthodox lifestyle, or perhaps because, once upon a time, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service...

Kriminalroman med privatdetektiven Bernie Gunther. Den foregår i underverdenen i efterkrigstidens Wien

An NPR Book of the Year A vicious murder puts Bernie Gunther on the trail of World War 2 criminals in Greece in this riveting historical thriller in Philip Kerr''s New York Times bestselling series. Munich, 1956. Bernie Gunther has a new name, a chip on his shoulder, and a dead-end career when an old friend arrives to repay a debt and encourages "Christoph Ganz" to take a job as a claims adjuster in a major German insurance company with a client in Athens, Greece. Under the cover of his new identity, Bernie begins to investigate a claim by Siegfried Witzel, a brutish former Wehrmacht soldier who served in Greece during the war. Witzel''s claimed losses are large , and, even worse, they may be the stolen spoils of Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz. But when Bernie tries to confront Witzel, he finds that someone else has gotten to him first, leaving a corpse in his place. Enter Lieutenant Leventis, who recognizes in this case the highly grotesque style of a killer he investigated during the height of the war. Back then, a young Leventis suspected an S.S. officer whose connection to the German government made him untouchable. He''s kept that man''s name in his memory all these years, waiting for his second chance at justice... Working together, Leventis and Bernie hope to put their cases--new and old--to bed. But there''s a much more sinister truth to acknowledge: A killer has returned to Athens...one who may have never left.

Bernie Gunther, Kerr''s best-loved protagonist, takes center stage in this fast-paced, twist-filled thriller that turns his acclaimed German trilogy into a surprise-laden quartet.

Detective Bernie Gunther flees to Peron-era Argentina in the wake of wrongful accusations about his war time activities and reluctantly investigates the double case of a murdered girl and a missing banker''s daughter.

A terrifyingly prescient cult classic by the bestselling author of the Bernie Gunther series. “Chilling...absorbing...part techno-thriller, part futuristic detective story, part diary of a serial killer.”—The New York Times Book Review LONDON, 2013. Serial killings have reached epidemic proportions—even with the widespread government use of DNA detection, brain-imaging, and the “punitive coma.” Beautiful, whip-smart, and driven by demons of her own, Detective Isadora “Jake” Jacowicz must stop a murderer, code-named “Wittgenstein,” who has taken it upon himself to eliminate any man who has tested posiu00adtive for a tendency towards violent behavior—even if his victim has never committed a crime. He is a killer whose intellectual brilliance is matched only by his homicidal madness.

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...

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...

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.

Serving a sentence for manslaughter he didn''t commit, Dave Delano spent five years in prison calculating a flawless get-rich-quick plan: a simple hijacking on the high seas.

From New York Times-bestselling author Philip Kerr, the much-anticipated return of Bernie Gunther in a series hailed by Malcolm Forbes as "the best crime novels around today." A beautiful actress, a rising star of the giant German film company UFA, now controlled by the Propaganda Ministry. The very clever, very dangerous Propaganda Minister--close confidant of Hitler, an ambitious schemer and flagrant libertine. And Bernie Gunther, former Berlin homicide bull, now forced to do favors for Joseph Goebbels at the Propaganda Minister''s command. This time, the favor is personal. And this time, nothing is what it seems. Set down amid the killing fields of Ustashe-controlled Croatia, 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.

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.

"Scary-story enthusiast Billy Shivers helps out when the Haunted House of Books threatens to go out of business"--

''One of the greatest anti-heroes ever written'' LEE CHILD ''A man doesn''t work for his enemies unless he has little choice in the matter.'' So says Bernie Gunther. It is 1954 and Bernie is in Cuba. Tiring of his increasingly dangerous work spying on Meyer Lansky, Bernie acquires a boat and a beautiful companion and quits the island. But the US Navy has other ideas, and soon he finds himself in a place with which he is all too familiar - a prison cell. After exhaustive questioning, he is flown back to Berlin and yet another prison cell with a proposition: work for French intelligence or hang for murder. The job is simple: he is to meet and greet POWs returning to Germany and to look out for one in particular, a French war criminal and member of the French SS who has been posing as a German Wehrmacht officer. The French are anxious to catch up with this man and deal with him in their own ruthless way. But Bernie''s past as a German POW in Russia is about to catch up with him - in a way he could never have foreseen. Bernie Gunther''s seventh outing delivers more of the fast-paced and quick-witted action that we have come to expect from Philip Kerr. Set in Cuba, a Soviet POW camp, Paris and Berlin, and ranging over a period of twenty years from the Thirties to the Fifties, Field Grey is an outstanding thriller by a writer at the top of his game.

Acclaimed for his historical mysteries, the New York Times bestselling author of the Bernie Gunther series seamlessly shifts to a present-day setting in this intense psychological thriller. Gil Martins, an agent with the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Unit in Houston, sees the violence wrought by extremists of all kinds. Gil has always been on the side of justice—until he learns something that shakes his faith in the system, in himself, and in God. Desperate, he prays, begging to know God is there. When a serial killer begins targeting the morally righteous at the same time that a number of secular icons come under attack, Gil realizes that his prayers are being answered in a most terrifying way.

EVERYONE IS GUILTY OF SOMETHING... In comtemporary Russia the old ghosts have been laid to rest, but the stench of corruption is just as strong as ever. Now a top-level Moscow investigator, dispatched to St. Petersburg, is about to discover just how deep the decadence runs--in both the corridors of power and the labyrinth of the human heart. The man from Moscow has been teamed up with Grushko, a palm-reading local detective with Elvis Presley hair. Together they embark on a investigation into the brutal murder of a famous and controversial journalist. To Grushko, an expert in the ruthlessness of the rising Russian Mafia, the killing has all the earmarks of a professional hit. But in the new Russia appearances have almost as little value as the new ruble. Soon the focus of the investigation will fall on the journalist''s widow, a pinup beauty whom one detective will find impossible to trust...the other to resist. Author Bio:

In the heart of Los Angeles, the "smart" building nicknamed "the Grid" can talk to its occupants, forecast the weather, and tell if any inhabitant has been taking drugs. On the eve of its opening, the key players gather to put the finishing touches on their masterpiece of architecture and computer science. Then something goes terribly wrong, and people begin to die. Now the creators must stop their creation--before it kills them all, one by one.

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.

Technological thriller set in Los Angeles in 1998. The Gridiron is a state-of-the-art building controlled by an intricate computer system. When the bizarre deaths begin, the computer is chief suspect.

From Philip Kerr, the New York Times bestselling author of the Bernie Gunther novels, comes a breathtaking journey of survival in the dark days of WWII in Ukraine, a country that remains tumultuous today. This inspiring tale captures the power of the human spirit and is perfect for fans of The Book Thief, Milkweed, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It will soon be another cold winter in the Ukraine. But it''s 1941, and things are different this year. Max, the devoted caretaker of an animal preserve, must learn to live with the Nazis who have overtaken this precious land. He must also learn to keep secrets—for there is a girl, Kalinka, who is hiding in the park. Kalinka has lost her home, her family, her belongings—everything but her life. Still, she has gained one small, precious gift: a relationship with the rare wild and wily Przewalski''s horses that wander the preserve. Aside from Max, these endangered animals are her only friends—until a Nazi campaign of extermination nearly wipes them out for good. Now Kalinka must set out on a treacherous journey across the frozen forest to save the only two surviving horses—and herself.

Set against the backdrop of Hitler''s rise to power, this tense thriller begins with Bernhard Gunther''s investigation into the disappearance of a diamond necklace. He soon finds himself caught in a web of Nazi politics and organized crime.

A mountaineer finds a skull fossil fragment in Nepal that turns out to be of hominid origin. When he returns to the area with his friend they discover a terrifying new breed of ape-man that has serious implications for science and danger for them.

In a futuristic world where blood is more valuable than gold, a man, whose daughter needs regular blood transfusions, must do all he can to get at the supplies. From the author of MARCH VIOLETS and DEAD MEAT. Reissued.

When twelve-year-old twins John and Philippa Gaunt develop extraordinary magical gifts, they travel to London to meet their wildly eccentric djinn-uncle, Nimrod, who teaches them to harness their new powers and sends them on a mission.