Philip Kerr

Author

Philip Kerr was a British author best known for the Bernie Gunther series, a sequence of fourteen crime novels set in Nazi Germany and its aftermath that are among the finest and most morally complex historical crime fiction ever written. His work combined meticulous historical research with hard-boiled detective fiction and a darkly... ironic sensibility. Born in Edinburgh in 1956, Kerr studied law at the University of Birmingham and philosophy at the University of Munich before working in advertising and journalism. He turned to writing fiction in the late 1980s. March Violets (1989) introduced Bernhard "Bernie" Gunther, a private detective and former policeman in 1936 Berlin who investigates crimes while navigating the moral nightmare of living and working in Nazi Germany. The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem completed the original Berlin Noir trilogy. The series eventually grew to fourteen novels, spanning from the 1930s to the 1950s and following Gunther through the war, the Holocaust, and the morally compromised world of post-war Europe. A Man Without Breath, like the other Gunther novels, places its detective at the intersection of crime fiction and historical horror — Gunther is a decent man trying to do honest work in a society built on lies, violence, and genocide. The series is remarkable for its refusal to simplify or sentimentalise — it confronts the complicity, compromise, and moral corruption of life under totalitarianism with unflinching honesty. Kerr also wrote standalone thrillers, children's books, and novels under pseudonyms. Kerr died in 2018, leaving behind a body of work that stands as one of the great achievements of modern crime fiction. The audiobook editions of Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels are gripping and atmospheric. His books and audiobooks are essential — among the finest crime fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Read more Show less