Bringing Kerr’s Berlin to Television

We were already aware that the streaming service Apple TV+ intended to adapt the late Philip Kerr’s excellent Berlin Noir thrillers for the small screen. But the London Times brings news now that filming “is at last underway,” with Jack Lowden (Slow Horses) starring as Kerr’s Nazi-era detective, Berlin Gunther. As The Times explains,

The series will be based on Metropolis, which chronologically is the earliest Gunther story, although the last published by Kerr. It is set in 1928—hence the title’s nod to Fritz Lang’s film of the time—and features Gunther as a young policeman working the vice beat in the seething German capital immortalised by Christopher Isherwood.

Kerr’s early novels have been characterised as Raymond Chandler transposed to the period of Weimar and the rise of Nazism, with later books cutting between the war years and those before and after it. The hard-boiled Gunther, who served as a sergeant in the First World War and whose wife then died of Spanish influenza, certainly shares similarities with Chandler’s cynical gumshoe, Philip Marlowe. The common tone is one of world-weariness. Both are essentially disappointed romantics who have come to an accommodation with the powers that be. They try to do the right thing, particularly when there is an attractive woman involved, but often find themselves in the role of fall guy.

The paper goes on to remark that “Part of the appeal for Apple is doubtless parallels that could be drawn now with a period when extremism was also on the rise. It is in Metropolis, as he investigates a baffling series of murders of those living on the margins, that Gunther first encounters nascent fascism. The chief challenge, however, for screenwriter Peter Straughan, who adapted Wolf Hall for television and won an Oscar for Conclave, will be capturing Kerr’s ability to meticulously recreate the era, as well as the spirit of the other principal character in the books, Berlin and its hard-headed inhabitants. With luck, Kerr will finally get the popular recognition he deserves.” Tom Shankland will direct the new show.

In addition to Lowden, this historical drama will feature Oscar winner Colin Firth, playing “Paul Lohser, a brilliant but prickly Murder Detective with the Berlin Police. Meticulous, anti-social and well-educated,” according to Deadline, “he’s everything Bernie isn’t. And as his partner and unlikely mentor, Lohser is Bernie’s best and only hope of catching … a serial killer targeting victims on the fringes of society.”

From Spy to Sleuth

In May we learned that Apple TV+ would be adapting the late Philip Kerr’s series of World War II-era crime novels for the small screen. Now comes word that 35-year-old Scottish actor Jack Lowden, who currently stars as once-up-and-coming MI5 agent River Cartwright on Slow Horses (another Apple TV+ production), will lead this coming program’s cast as German cop-turned-shamus Bernie Gunther.

As RadioTimes reports:

The first season is expected to be based on Kerr's [2019] novel Metropolis, the last book published in the series but set [in 1928] before all the others and providing the origin story for Bernie Gunther, the character Lowden is set to play.

The synopsis for the series, which is currently untitled, says: “Bernie is a police officer, newly promoted to the intimidating and elite Berlin Murder Squad, and must investigate what seems to be a serial killer targeting victims on the fringes of society.

“Bernie’s Berlin is a city of unprecedented freedom and dizzying turbulence, the Nazis just a distant nightmare waiting in the wings. With the political and social world shifting to a new norm, we see Bernie fighting for truth, whatever the cost.”

Deadline adds that “BAFTA nominee Tom Shankland will direct as well as executive produce the Apple TV+ series … Peter Straughan, who won the Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Conclave, will serve as showrunner as well as adapt the script and executive produce. Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman will also exec produce through their Playtone banner. Playtone and Apple most recently teamed on the World War II series Masters of the Air. The new series will be filmed in Berlin.”

(Above) Jack Lowden as River Cartwright in Slow Horses.

I admit, I’m having some trouble imagining Lowden as Bernie Gunther. I might have hired somebody a bit bigger and beefier for the role, to better fit my image of the character. But then, I didn’t think sexagenarian actress Lesley Manville was right for the part of book editor-cum-sleuth Susan Ryeland in Magpie Murders, the 2022 retailoring of Anthony Horowitz’s novel of that same name for television—and boy, was I wrong. So I am more than ready to give Lowden a chance here. I’m just glad to finally see Kerr’s heavy-drinking, heavy-smoking, and enthusiastically womanizing gumshoe finally make it to the small screen!

Bernie Gunther, TV Detective?

I’ve been a shameless devotee of Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther private-eye series ever since 1989, when I picked up a hardcover copy of March Violets, the first of those 14 novels. Much later, I was privileged to interview him for both The Rap Sheet and Kirkus Reviews, and I finally met and spoke with him briefly in 2016 during a book signing in Seattle. When Kerr passed away in 2018, aged 62, I wrote that, although the author himself was “gone from the community of crime-fiction writers, … I still have his books. For that, I’ll be forever grateful.”

So you can imagine how chuffed I was to read this in Deadline:

Apple TV+ has greenlit a long-gestating TV adaptation of the late Philip Kerr’s popular Berlin Noir books from Oscar-winning Conclave writer Peter Straughan, Doctor Who producer Bad Wolf, and Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s Playtone.

The untitled drama is based on Kerr’s final book Metropolis, which told the iconic detective’s origin story. Set in 1928, Metropolis follows newly promoted police officer Gunther in the intimidating elite Berlin Murder Squad, investigating what seems to be a serial killer targeting victims on the fringes of society. Gunther’s Berlin is described as a “city of unprecedented freedom and dizzying turbulence, the Nazis a distant nightmare waiting in the wings.”

We are told Apple is kicking off with Gunther’s origin story but there is scope to adapt more Berlin Noir books via the studio’s option. Gunther was made famous by Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy comprising March Violets, The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem, all of which were published around the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Kerr penned a further 11 Gunther books, which sold in droves worldwide, finishing with Metropolis before he died in 2018. Metropolis was published posthumously a year later.

Bernie Gunther is a captivating character, pessimistic, persistent, and crafty, with what Kerr’s Web site accurately describes as “a rough sense of humor and a rougher sense of right and wrong.” I have long thought that he’d make a splendid TV protagonist, but remain skeptical that the complicated, sometimes incongruous aspects of his personality could be satisfyingly portrayed on the screen. It may help that Kerr’s widow, the novelist Jane Thynne, owns the copyright in the Gunther novels, and might have some say in their TV adaptations.

Bullet Points: Various and Sundry Edition

• With production on the 25th James Bond film having been pushed back, and the picture’s release now delayed until April 2020, that leaves extra time for rumors to fill in where facts are so far absent. Talk that Agent 007 (again played by Daniel Craig) will be killed off in the next movie is probably bogus. But word that the still-untitled film might be shot, at least partly, in Jamaica appears to be true. The Spy Command reports that “The government of Jamaica on March 29 confirmed it’s in ‘advanced’ talks about having Bond 25 shooting on the island nation.” This wouldn’t be the first time 007 has invaded the lush land of reggae and jerk spices. Spy Command managing editor Bill Koenig writes, “Both Dr. No (1962) and Live and Let Die (1973) were filmed in Jamaica (it doubled for the fictional San Monique in the latter movie). Ian Fleming also wrote the first drafts for his 007 stories while in Jamaica during the winter.”

• Sadder Bond-related news: The Spy Command brings word that English actress/model Tania Mallet, “who had a small but key role in Goldfinger, has died at 77.” It goes on to tell that “In 1964’s Goldfinger, Mallet played Tilly Masterson, sister to Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton), who had been killed by being ‘painted gold,’ causing skin suffocation. Tilly seeks to avenge her sister’s death and is tailing Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe) in Switzerland. She takes a rifle shot at Goldfinger but almost hits Bond (Sean Connery).” Following that big-screen debut, Mallett (a cousin of actress Helen Mirren) resumed modeling, though she did appear as herself in several TV shows, and took an uncredited role in “The Midas Touch,” a 1978 episode of The New Avengers.

• Britain’s Piccadilly Publishing, which usually specializes in Westerns and men’s adventure yarns, will be making at least some of the numerous tales about newhound-turned-private eye Larry Kent available in e-book format—with their original “good girl” artwork. (See Curves Can Kill on the right.) Kent, if you don’t remember, began life on a 1950s Australian radio drama series (created by Ron Ingleby), then became a phenomenon in print—initially in a succession of novelettes, but ultimately in hundreds of novels, all of them with high body counts. More info is on the Piccadilly Web site.

• Criminal Element continues to roll out its posts revisiting books that, over the last 65 years, have won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Although the quality of entries is inconsistent, and some participating critics have insisted on judging works according to modern viewpoints rather than historical ones, in general, the series has offered an interesting look back at wonderful—if sometimes forgotten—criminal yarns. The latest installment, contributed by novelist Philip Margolin (The Perfect Alibi) re-examines The Quiller Memorandum (aka The Berlin Memorandum), the first book in Adam Hall’s 20-volume series starring the spy known only as Quiller. Margolin writes:

The Quiller Memorandum is in many was an experimental novel. It is narrated in a stream of consciousness style by Quiller, and the narrative is frequently exhausting as we are forced to read page after page detailing the mechanics of losing a tail and other spycraft. What saves the book is Hall’s description of the Nazi horrors that motivate Quiller to find the Nazis in hiding and bring them to justice. There are some good twists and an interesting relationship between Quiller and Inga, the mysterious femme fatale. I moved back and forth between fascination, boredom, and misbelief while reading the novel, especially the interrogation sequences.

If you’ve fallen behind in reading Criminal Element’s Edgar Awards series, you can catch up with all of the posts here.

• Philip Kerr’s Metropolis, his 14th and final Bernie Gunther novel, won’t go on sale for another week. But its welcome is already in full swing. Crime Fiction Lover has posted a handy guide to the series, all of the books—whether set in Europe, South America, or Cuba—starring Gunther, a mordantly humorous, half-Jewish, Nazi-hating Berlin homicide detective turned (sometimes reluctant) private eye. Meanwhile, the Rap Sheet’s UK correspondent, Ali Karim, has posted this video of the book’s official launch at London’s Daunt Books, well attended by publishing types and critics pleased to celebrate author Kerr, who died a year ago, at age 62. On hand, too, were Kerr’s editor, Jane Wood, and his wife, journalist-novelist Jane Thynne, who delivered a warm, revealing tribute to her late husband.

• While I remain skeptical of the whole enterprise, I’m not surprised by this news: HBO-TV has greenlighted a new “Perry Mason origin series, starring Matthew Rhys as the titular icon.” Deadline Hollywood notes that “prolific TV director, writer, and producer Tim Van Patten (Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones) has been tapped to direct and executive produce” the show.

• I wish this Rockford Files diorama was widely available.

• Sopranos fans, looking forward to the September 25, 2020, release of David Chase’s prequel film, The Many Saints of Newark, will be interested in a tidbit contained in B.V. Lawson’s latest “Media for Murder” column, explaining that the movie “has cast its final major lead role. Michela De Rossi, the Italian-born actress who made her debut in Boys Cry, has been set to join Alessandro Nivola, Vera Farmiga, Ray Liotta, Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Billy Magnussen, John Magaro, Michael Gandolfini, and the just-cast Leslie Odom Jr. in the ensemble drama for New Line.” A bit more information about De Rossi can be found in Entertainment CheatSheet.

• I’ve been a fan of James McClure’s novels ever since college. Beginning with 1971’s The Steam Pig, this author—who died in 2006—composed eight police procedurals set in apartheid-era South Africa, all starring a racially mixed pair of sleuths, Afrikaan Lieutenant Tromp Kramer of the Murder and Robbery Squad and his Zulu assistant, Sergeant Mickey Zondi. If you haven’t yet discovered these works, definitely check out Neil Nyren’s briefing on his fiction.

• It was nice to see the 1986-1988 TV series Crime Story receive a little love recently from New York magazine’s Vulture site. Comparing that 1960s-set Michael Mann drama with another, better-known Mann project, Miami Vice, Nathan Smith opines:

Where Miami Vice brought the police procedural into the future—flashy clothes, big tunes, heaps of style—Crime Story went back in time, and even if it’s the lesser-known of the two series, it revolutionized the genre on a molecular level, whereas Miami Vice achieved the same only on the surface. Two decades before The Sopranos and The Wire, Crime Story was one of the very first serialized prime-time dramas to ditch the procedural format and tell a season-long story. …

Crime Story unlocked the gates for shows like Wiseguy, Twin Peaks, and The X-Files, the wayward step-children of the police procedural. Its gritty realism would be carried on by the likes of Homicide: Life on the Street and NYPD Blue. But its most important contribution, the three words “to be continued … ” at the end of every single episode, influenced nearly every subsequent drama on prime time. Though Crime Story wasn’t the first series to flash those words across the screen—every show from Dallas to The Brady Bunch had done a multi-episode arc—the idea of a story that continued seemingly without end or resolution in sight, was new.

• For your amusement, from Flavorwire: “Classic Songs Reimagined as Vintage Pulp Book Covers.”

• During the mid-1960s, the American TV network NBC broadcast a 26-episode animated series called The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo. It starred the popular elderly, short, and extremely near-sighted character Quincy Magoo (voiced by Jim Backus of Gilligan’s Island fame), who in this show played an actor appearing in abbreviated stage productions of classic works of fiction. “The series was originally shown in prime time …,” explains Wikipedia, “therefore certain more mature elements were present. These included death threats (William Tell, Robin Hood, Don Quixote, The Three Musketeers, Sherlock Holmes), children in danger (Treasure Island, Gunga Din, William Tell), insanity (Don Quixote, Moby Dick), heroic self-sacrifice (Gunga Din), religious themes (Noah’s Ark), and realistic (although mostly bloodless) violence including swordplay, shooting, clubbing, drowning, and character deaths (most episodes).” I remember watching reruns of the episodes based on Frankenstein, Cyrano de Bergerac, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Count of Monte Cristo. But I’d forgotten until this last weekend that there was a Sherlock Holmes episode, featuring Magoo as the faithful Doctor John H. Watson. (Thank you to the Man from U.N.C.L.E.—Spies & Detectives Facebook page for reminding me.) The case undertaken in that episode, writes Scott Monty in his blog I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, “is a clever little mystery that includes touches of a number of Sherlock Holmes stories, including The Sign of Four, ‘The Speckled Band,’ ‘The Musgrave Ritual,’ and ‘The Six Napoleons’ to name a few.” Providing the voice of Holmes was actor Paul Frees, who also voiced antagonist Boris Badenov on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The episode is only 23 minutes long, and at least for the nonce, can be enjoyed here.

• This year’s Mystery Fest Key West won’t take place until late June, but its publicity minions are already heralding its scheduled components. This year’s headliner will be psychological suspense master Jeffery Deaver, with special host Heather Graham. And a Whodunit Mystery Writing Competition has been organized in association with the convention. From a news release: “Sponsored by Absolutely Amazing eBooks, candidates wishing to compete are invited to submit the first three pages (maximum 750 words) of a finished, but unpublished manuscript to whodunitaward@mysteryfestkeywest.com no later than April 15, 2019. There is no fee to enter; finalists will be notified by May 1, and will have until May 10 to submit full manuscripts.” You will find more news about the 2019 Mystery Fest here.

• There’s been a lot written of late about Jack the Ripper—not bad for a guy (presumably) whose claim to infamy dates back more than 130 years. Media reports in March suggested that DNA analysis had finally identified the Ripper as being “Aaron Kosminski, a 23-year-old barber of Polish descent who lived in London at the time [1888],” but was subsequently committed to an insane asylum. Proof, it was said, could be found in seminal fluid left behind on a shawl belonging to Catherine Eddowes, the killer’s fourth recorded victim. However, doubts were soon raised as to whether Eddowes had ever owned such a scarf, and whether DNA found upon it could be trusted, given that it would’ve been “handled by countless people over the years.” In the midst of these debates, British social historian Hallie Rubenhold’s latest work of non-fiction, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, was published in the UK (with a U.S. edition due for release next week). The Guardian greeted the book as “a landmark study [that] calls time on the misogyny that fed the Jack the Ripper myth.” Reviewer Frances Wilson writes:

Few women have had the moment of their deaths returned to more often, and with as much relish, as Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. In each case their throats were cut, and four of them had their entrails removed. Kelly, the only one of “the canonical five”, as Jack the Ripper’s known victims are called, to die in her bed, was completely mutilated. Forests have been felled in the interests of unmasking the murderer, but until now no one has bothered to discover the identity of his victims. The Five is thus an angry and important work of historical detection, calling time on the misogyny that has fed the Ripper myth.

It is astonishing how little we know about these five, apart from their names. Hallie Rubenhold fleshes out their stories from the scraps that are available: coroner’s inquests (three of which are missing); “a body of edited, embellished, misheard and re-interpreted newspaper reports”; parish registers; court registers; birth, marriage and death records; rate books and the archives of the London workhouses. For accounts of poverty in London she turns to Francis Place, Henry Mayhew and Charles Booth; she gets facts and figures from Mrs Beaton. With the documentary veracity of a set of Hogarth prints, Rubenhold follows the victims’ doomed footsteps from birth to death. Except that there is no attempt to imagine each woman’s last moments, or describe the state of her body, or further the search for their killer. Instead she asks how it is that these women—all of them somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister, somebody’s lover—ended up alone and destitute on the streets of Whitechapel.

• Happy 80th birthday, Batman!

• Speaking of Gotham’s Caped Crusader, it seems his family’s butler, Alfred Pennyworth, is about to get his own 1960s spy show, appropriately titled Pennyworth. The Double O Section informs us that “In the 10-episode drama series, Alfred Pennyworth (The Imitation Game’s Jack Bannon), described by Deadline as ‘a former British SAS soldier in his 20s,’ forms a private security company ‘and goes to work with young billionaire Thomas Wayne (Fleabag’s Ben Aldridge), who’s not yet Bruce’s father, in 1960s London.’” Pennyworth is set to premiere this summer on EPIX. By the way, that Double O Section post includes a very brief trailer for the series.

• In a new piece for CrimeReads, author Stephanie Jo Harris (The Poet Recusant) contends that Victor Hugo’s 1862 masterpiece, Les Miserables, both “created a model for police procedurals” and, in the person of Inspector Javert, gave us a “standard for the unyielding, driven law enforcement officer obsessed with justice.”

• I was surprised to learn, while reading Bill Selnes’ Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan, that Margot Kinberg “has decided to cease writing her blog,” Confessions of a Mystery Novelist. Selnes notes: “For almost 10 years Margot provided a daily post. By my calculations she wrote over 3,000 posts. She highlighted at least 500 different authors!” I would have included a link here to Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, so that people less than familiar with Kinberg’s work could check out what she had accomplished. However, it seems she’s not just stopped writing her blog, but has removed it entirely from the Web. What a shame, not only because good blogs like Kinberg’s can still provide useful information to readers, even when they’re no longer being updated, but because all of the links other blogs established to hers over the last decade are now broken. I have sifted through the full run of The Rap Sheet, scouting for links to Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, and have changed most of them to connect instead with pages in the Internet archive Wayback Machine, but a handful remain inoperative. I don’t mean to criticize Kinberg for her actions; I’m sure they made sense to her at the time. However, I really wish that when bloggers stop working on their sites, they would simply leave them dormant, rather than deleting them entirely.

• Maybe, though, I’m just more sensitive to these matters than most people. I cannot imagine deliberately scrubbing The Rap Sheet from the Web. I have put far too many hours of work into writing and editing this blog to see it all disappear. Unless the world experiences electronic catastrophe, I expect The Rap Sheet to outlast me.

• Despite its impersonal salutation (“Dear Journalists”), I was intrigued recently by a letter sent my way by Bloomsbury Publishing, promoting a forthcoming biography called Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan. The author is Buchan’s granddaughter, Ursula Buchan. Bloomsbury offered this brief on her work:

John Buchan’s name is known across the world for The Thirty-Nine Steps. In the past one hundred years the classic thriller has never been out of print and has inspired numerous adaptations for film, television, radio and stage, beginning with the celebrated version by Alfred Hitchcock.

Yet there was vastly more to “J.B.” He wrote more than a hundred books—fiction and non-fiction—and a thousand articles for newspapers and magazines. He was a scholar, antiquarian, barrister, colonial administrator, journal editor, literary critic, publisher, war correspondent, director of wartime propaganda, member of parliament and imperial proconsul—given a state funeral when he died, a deeply admired and loved Governor-General of Canada.

His teenage years in Glasgow’s Gorbals, where his father was the Free Church minister, contributed to his ease with shepherds and ambassadors, fur-trappers and prime ministers. His improbable marriage to a member of the aristocratic Grosvenor family means that this account of his life contains, at its heart, an enduring love story.

Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps is due out on June 18.

• An entirely different letter informed me that Crossroad Press, a North Carolina-based digital publishing venture, last month reissued the 1967 spy novel The Man from Pansy, by Don Rico. Now, you may be shocked to learn this, but I’d never heard of such a book or its star, Pentagon agent Buzz Cardigan. Crossroad helpfully characterized it as a “Swingin’ ’60s spy spoof—think James Bond with LOTS of snark—a time capsule for genre fans and fun for any reader.” What makes the three-book series distinctive, too, is that Cardigan (as in the sweater?) is “a dedicated straight spy [who] must take on the role of a gay man to root out enemies of the U.S. who lurk in the shadows of the sexual revolution.” In addition to The Man from Pansy, Crossroad has made its sequels, The Daisy Dilemma (1967) and The Passion Flower Puzzle (1968), available to Kindle users. If any Rap Sheet followers have read these novels, and can offer their opinions I hope they’ll do so.

• Here’s another series that tried to capitalize on the 1960s interest in spy fiction, this one starring Dan Walker, “a businessman and former Naval Intelligence Officer who takes periodic assignments from the CIA where he saves the world and gets laid.”

• Chris Sullivan, who writes the blog Morse, Lewis and Endeavour, has created two YouTube playlists showcasing the music featured in all three TV series based on or inspired by Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse stories. If you click here, you can listen to either the opera music or the other classical music heard in all of those shows.

• More than a few fine author interviews have sprouted up on the Web recently. Among them are conversations with Joe R. Lansdale (The Elephant of Surprise), Betty Webb (Desert Redemption), Max Allan Collins (Girl Most Likely), Jacqueline Winspear (The American Agent), Harlan Coben (Run Away), Jane Stanton Hitchcock (Bluff), Tim O’Mara (Down to the River), Edith Maxwell (Charity’s Burden), Glen Erik Hamilton (Mercy River), and Megan Collins (The Winter Sister).

• Along with so many others, The Rap Sheet’s Google+ page disappeared earlier today, never to be seen again.

• And though I’m not a big reader of spooky yarns, the new anthology Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense, edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger (Pegasus), certainly has me intrigued. That’s because it includes lesser-known stories by such authors as Charles Dickens, Edith Wharton, and Mark Twain right alongside “overlooked works” by horror-fiction favorites such as Edgar Allan Poe and M.R. James. Co-editors Morton and Klinger introduce their collection with this essay.

Readying Gunther’s Swan Song

When popular British author Philip Kerr died this last March at age 62, after a battle with bladder cancer, it was announced that his UK publisher, Quercus, had possession of the completed first draft of a final novel starring Kerr’s series protagonist, onetime Berlin police detective Bernie Gunther. Now comes word, via The Real Book Spy, of what that novel—a prequel to be titled Metropolis—will offer:

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 shakey Weimar government makes a last, desperate attempt to control a nation edging toward 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.

Metropolis is set for release in the States on April 9, 2019.

A Send-off Full of Gratitude

It was only two days ago that I finished my voracious reading of Greeks Bearing Gifts, the penultimate novel by Philip Kerr, who passed away last month at age 62, just prior to the novel’s publication. British author Kerr had long been a favorite author of mine, someone whose writing combined Raymond Chandler’s poetic sarcasm about life and its disappointments with a historian’s grasp of world-changing events and their often-underappreciated impact on individuals.

Therefore, I was pleased to see this new post in Shotsmag Confidential, penned by my good friend and colleague Ali Karim, relating events from Kerr’s funeral, which was held this week at St. Mary’s Church in the London district of Wimbledon. Ali paid his last respects to Kerr in company with critic-author Mike Ripley. He writes:

It was a very sunny day in London, and the attendants mainly friends and family members, though we met up with Jane Wood, his [UK] editor, Carodoc King [Kerr’s literary agent], and saw [author] Sebastian Faulks as well as [actor] John Sessions.

There were readings from his children, Charlie, William and Naomi, and the priest recounted how Phil Kerr found faith later in life.

We were invited by the family back to their house, where they had catering and drinks for the guests. I got talking to the team from Quercus Publishing, including … Jane Wood. She confirmed that the final Bernie Gunther novel, Metropolis, has been delivered [it’s due out in April 2019], and she confirmed Carodoc King’s assertion that “Metropolis is the finest and most complex and thrilling Bernie Gunther novel.”

So it was soon time to leave, [but] before heading off, Mike Ripley and I thanked Quercus Publishing and Phil’s family for a memorable celebration—though sad—for we came to represent the very best wishes from Shots magazine, The Rap Sheet, January Magazine, and Deadly Pleasures Magazine (as we contribute to [all of] them).

One part of Carodoc King’s comments echoes in my mind, and is one that I deeply believe to be true: “despite all the published work of Philip Kerr, it will be Bernie Gunther that he will be remembered for.”

It’s heartbreaking to me that an author who has brought so much pleasure to my reading experiences over the years should have left us so early, and I am sorry that I could not attend his funeral myself. But I’m glad to know he was shown off with such manifest love.

Worthy of Appraisal

• Mystery Fanfare brings the unhappy news that Aunt Agatha’s Mystery Bookshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan—which won the 2014 Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America for “outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing”—will shut its doors for good this coming August, after 26 years in business. Owners Robin and Jamie Agnew say they’ve scheduled a closing event for Sunday, August 26, with guest author William Kent Krueger, “and we hope you’ll join us for a final gather round the communal mysterious hearth.”

• If you were too busy yesterday with chocolate bunnies and secreted Easter eggs to have noticed that the Thrilling Detective Web Site celebrated its 20th anniversary, there’s plenty of time now to check out editor Kevin Burton Smith’s commemorative additions to the site.

• The latest “Getting Away with Murder,” Mike Ripley’s monthly column for Shots, contains notes about Philip Kerr’s recent and untimely demise, Stella Duffy’s success in completing a previously unfinished last novel by Ngaio Marsh, and new fiction releases from the likes of Lindsey Davis, Peter Morfoot, and Andrew Taylor.

• Speaking of Philip Kerr, CrimeReads has posted a rather excellent piece by associate editor Molly Odintz remarking on the literary impact and lasting value of Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series.

• I see the third issue of Down & Out: The Magazine is now available in print and e-book versions. Its contents include new short fiction by Barry Lancet, Art Taylor, Patricia Abbott, and Peter Sellers; “a discussion and a story by one of the hard-boiled school’s originators, Raoul Whitfield”; and the latest edition of my “Placed in Evidence” column, focused on the private-eye novels of Stanley Ellin.

• Congratulations to Spanish writer José Ignacio Escribano on the ninth birthday of his blog, A Crime Is Afoot.

• The Web site Inside Hook was not familiar to me until this afternoon. Yet it contains an intriguing interview with Jim Heimann about Los Angeles’ “seedy underbelly.” L.A. native Heimann, of course, is the author of Dark City: The Real Los Angeles Noir (Taschen America), a volume filled with photographs of places that have “provided inspiration for journalists, pulp fiction scribes, and filmland script writers in their creation of the noir genre.” (Hat tip to Elizabeth Foxwell’s blog, The Bunburyist.)

• And while this isn’t about crime fiction, it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. Today marks 50 years since the big-screen debut of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the landmark science-fiction adventure written by motion-picture director Stanley Kubrick and noted SF author Arthur C. Clarke (whose 1951 short story “The Sentinel” helped inspire the movie). 2001 premiered on April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C., and then opened to wider U.S. distribution the next day. One of the most beautiful and memorable aspects of that film was its musical score, employing a variety of classical works, among them Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra,” which served as the main title theme. (Click here to relive the drama of that opening number.) What people forget, especially half a century on, is that Kubrick had commissioned Hollywood composer Alex North to create an original soundtrack for his film. But as Wikipedia notes, Kubrick decided during his post-production work to toss that score “in favor of the now-familiar classical pieces he had earlier chosen as ‘guide pieces’ for the soundtrack.” Wikipedia adds that “North did not know of the abandonment of the score until after he saw the film’s premiere screening.” One can’t help wondering whether 2001: A Space Odyssey might be remembered differently had Kubrick stuck with North’s musical score, the beginning of which—including an alternative main title theme—can be heard here. Additional selections from North’s 2001 score can be sampled here. UPDATE: You can read more about this movie’s 50th anniversary by clicking here.

Farewell and Thanks to Philip Kerr

One feels the strong desire, when writing about Edinburgh-born novelist Philip Kerr—who passed away yesterday, March 23, at the early age of 62—to simply quote from his many books and be done with it; your own prose contributions seem trifling and etiolated by comparison. Kerr took particular delight in crafting his character descriptions. Here, for instance, is how—in 2008’s A Quiet Flame (one of my favorites among Kerr’s numerous works)—he depicts Carlos Fuldner, an Argentine-born member of Adolf Hitler’s SS, who helped Nazis flee to South America after World War II:

From the back of his well-oiled head I judged Fuldner to be around forty. His German was fluent but with a little soft colour on the edges of the tones. To speak the language of Goethe and Schiller, you have to stick your vowels in a pencil sharpener. He liked to talk, that much was evident. He wasn’t tall and he wasn’t good-looking, but then he wasn’t short or ugly either, just ordinary, in a good suit with good manners and a nice manicure. … His mouth was wide and sensuous, his eyes were lazy but intelligent and his forehead was as high as a church cupola.

That same novel offers this sketch of a young woman, Anna Yagubsky, who will help the story’s protagonist, Berlin police detective-turned-private eye Bernie Gunther, solve a ghastly murder in Buenos Aires that appears similar to crimes committed years ago in Germany:

She was tall and slim with a spectacular waterfall of black curly hair. Her eyes were the shape and colour of chocolate-covered almonds. She wore a tailored tweed jacket buttoned tight at the waist, and a matching long pencil skirt that made me wish I had a couple of sheets of paper. Her figure was all right if you liked them built like expensive thoroughbreds. I happened to like them built that way just fine.

The Quiet Flame was the fifth novel Kerr produced in what he’d imagined originally as a one-off, later a trilogy, starring Gunther, the sardonic, self-deprecating, Nazi-detesting, half-Jewish and sometimes wholly self-destructive Berliner who became famous for solving crimes during World War II and beyond. Gunther debuted in March Violets (1989), which was set in 1936—before the war broke out—and found him being hired by a steel millionaire who wanted to know not only what had become of diamonds owned by his recently slain daughter, but who had killed her and her husband. The sleuth returned in The Pale Criminal (1990) and again in A German Requiem (1991), that latter tale taking place in the war’s wake and dispatching Gunther to Vienna, where he was expected to help a former colleague accused of shooting an American Nazi-hunter.

“I never signed on to be a writer just to do a series …,” Kerr told me during a 2010 interview for The Rap Sheet. “Besides, it’s not always a good idea to give people what they want until they want it more. When I finished Book 3 (German Requiem) of the original trilogy, I didn’t have the impression that I was putting aside anything important.”

He went off, instead, to pen a succession of standalone thrillers, including A Philosophical Investigation (1992), Dead Meat (1993), Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton (2002), and finally Hitler’s Peace (2005), which builds around plots against Josef Stalin, President Franklin Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, all of whom are headed to a conference in Teheran, Iran, in 1943.

Not until 2006—a decade and a half after the publication of A German Requiem—did Bernie Gunther make his unlikely return, in The One from the Other. That has been followed since by almost annual sequels, among them If the Dead Rise Not (which won the 2009 Ellis Peters Historical Award), Prague Fatale (2011), The Lady From Zagreb (2015), The Other Side of Silence (2016), and last year’s Prussian Blue. The 13th Gunther outing, Greeks Bearing Gifts (Marian Wood Books/Putnam)—which finds him sent away to Athens, in 1957, to look into the suspicious sinking of a ship and the murder of an ex-Wehrmacht Navy man—is set for release on April 3.

According to Agence France-Presse, prior to his death Kerr had completed the first draft of a 14th Gunther adventure, which is “due for publication next year.”

Philip Ballantyne Kerr took his first breath in Edinburgh, Scotland, on February 22, 1956. He studied law and philosophy at England’s University of Birmingham, before embarking on what might well have become a lucrative and lifelong career in advertising. However, Kerr despised being an advertising copywriter. The only good thing about it, he later insisted, was that it left him ample free time to indulge in his genuine interest: fiction-writing. Kerr had dreamed of concocting fiction ever since he was about 9 years old, so he chose to fill part of the free time his job allowed him scratching out a historical novel inspired by his visits to Berlin. The task took him three years, but resulted in March Violets. After the success of that endeavor, Kerr decided he was ready to become a full-time author.

Some readers, mostly younger ones, may know Kerr as “P.B. Kerr,” the byline under which he created the “Children of the Lamp” series for young readers, the latest installment of which was 2011’s The Grave Robbers of Genghis Khan. Others will recognize him for False Nine (2012) and two preceding yarns featuring Scott Mason, a London football manager-cum-amateur detective. Or they may be familiar with the pair of standalone thrillers for adults he completed over the last decade: Prayer (2013) and Research (2014).

But it’s surely the Bernie Gunther series for which Kerr is destined to be best-remembered. Those intricate tales, contrasting mostly quotidian crimes against the larger, wider-ranging atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany, are filled with moral complexities and the pain of both war’s violence and war’s survival. They are social histories, really, and without question are also some of the finest, richest crime novels you’ll ever read. Gunther—who, Philip Kerr confessed, represented the “the dark side of my own character”—proves to be an ideal guide (if occasionally misguided himself) through Kerr’s blended world of fiction and non-fiction.

I like this description of the character, from the biography page of Kerr’s Web site:

Gunther is … a gumshoe in the grand and seamy tradition of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. But he surely has the toughest beat in detective fiction—not least because the definition of crime in his world is so strange, so skewed by ideology. ‘The [German] National Socialist regime had a weird and perverted idea of crime,’ says Kerr. ‘It was far more interested in rounding up Jews and Communists than in solving real crimes. And they spent a lot of time covering up true crime when it did happen, so that it didn’t reflect badly on the authorities. More than that, professional criminals could apply for jobs in the SS and the Gestapo. It didn’t matter that they were not committed Party members; the Nazis were masters at delegating cruelty.’

Throughout the books Gunther spends his time uncovering nasty truths while trying desperately not to get sucked into Nazism’s gaping maw. Does that make him a hero, a kind of reluctant resister? Kerr says not. ‘It’s perfectly possible to be a hero on a Monday and a coward on a Wednesday. Gunther is morally ambiguous. As a patriotic German watching his country being hijacked by a bunch of thugs, he has a dilemma: how to stay alive and try and prosper without selling out. I am looking to paint him into a corner so that he can’t cross the floor without getting paint on his shoes.’

I didn’t know Philip Kerr well. I had the chance to interview him only on two occasions, both times via e-mail—once for The Rap Sheet (as previously mentioned), and again for Kirkus Reviews, after his 2011 Gunther novel, Field Gray, was published. I was overjoyed, in 2016, by the opportunity to finally meet him in person, during a book-signing event at the old Seattle Mystery Bookshop. And I have heard since from people who’d enjoyed greater contact with him. They mention his civility, his humor, the depth of his observations on life and history, his generosity in answering readers’ questions about his work. I am saddened by the idea that I will no longer have chances to communicate with Philip Kerr, and that his presence is gone from the community of crime-fiction writers.

But I still have his books. For that, I’ll be forever grateful.

FOLLOW-UP I: Most stories published over the last couple of days about Kerr’s sudden demise don’t tell the cause of his passing. But this one from The New York Times attributes it to bladder cancer.

FOLLOW-UP II: The Bookseller reported late last year that UK publisher Quercus had “acquired three new novels in Philip Kerr’s historical noir series featuring Detective Bernie Gunther.” Kerr had apparently finished composing the first draft of one of those, which is to be titled Metropolis and issued in the spring of 2019. The Bookseller says its story “takes Kerr’s hero back to the dying days of the Weimar Republic just before Hitler came to power.” This same Bookseller piece, by the way, mentions that “A Bernie Gunther mini-series is in development at HBO with Tom Hanks as executive producer.” Mystery*File has a bit more information about that project here.

READ MORE: “Philip Kerr Obituary,” by Danuta Kean (The Guardian); “Remembering Philip Kerr,” by Otto Penzler (CrimeReads); “In Memoriam,” by Ayo Onatade (Shotsmag Confidential); “A Tribute to Philip Kerr,” by Garrick Webster (Crime Fiction Lover); “Philip Kerr (1956–2018): A Tribute,” by José Ignacio Escribano (A Crime Is Afoot); “R.I.P., Philip Kerr,” by Brian Thornton (SleuthSayers); “Pay It Forward: Philip Kerr,” by Mark Pryor (The Thrill Begins); “Guest Blog: Mark Pryor Remembers Philip Kerr” (MysteryPeople).

Kerr Passes Away

I just read on Facebook about Philip Kerr’s death, at age 62. His passing has been confirmed by Kerr’s wife, fellow author Jane Thynne, in a Twitter posting:

RIP beloved Philip Kerr. Creator of the wonderful #BernieGunther. Genius writer and adored father and husband. 1956-2018.

I can’t tell you how saddened I am by this news. I’m a huge fan of Kerr’s Bernie Gunther historical crime series. However, I am away from my office now, and will have to learn and write more once I return.

READ MORE: “Philip Kerr, Author of Bernie Gunther Novels, Dies Aged 62,” by Hannah Summers (The Guardian).

Bullet Points: Out and About Edition

• Last week brought an announcement, by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, of the nominees for its 2016 Scribe Awards. As the IAMTW explains, these annual commendations honor “licensed works that tie in with other media such as television, movies, gaming, or comic books.” I won’t try to list all of the contenders here, since many of them are drawn from the science fiction or fantasy categories, but the four rivals seeking the Best Original Novel—General prize are crime-fiction related:

— Elementary: The Ghost Line, by Adam Christopher (Titan)
— Kill Me, Darling, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Titan)
— Don Pendleton’s Mack Bolan: Desert Falcons, by Michael A. Black (Gold Eagle)
— 24: Rogue, by David Mack (Forge)

In addition, “Fallout,” by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (The Strand Magazine, November 2014-February 2015), is in the running for Best Short Story. Again, you’ll find all of the nominees here.

• Meanwhile, Collins, Lee Goldberg, Alan Dean Foster, and Elizabeth Hand were interviewed on the subject of media tie-ins for On the Media, a syndicated radio show from New York’s WNYC.

• Speaking of prizes … Louisianan B.J. Bourg has won the 2016 EPIC E-book Award in the category of Mystery for his novel James 516. (In case you’re wondering, EPIC stands for Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition.) Also nominated for that prize were Murder on Edisto, by C. Hope Clark; Secrets, Lies, and Homicide, by Patricia Dusenbury; Shadows on Iron Mountain, by Chuck Walsh; and The Old Inn at Punta de Sangre, by Theresa Donovan Brown. The complete rundown of finalists this year’s numerous categories can be found here.

• Criminal Element is running a series of posts focusing on this year’s nominees for the Edgar Awards (to be given out on April 28.) Most recently, Kristin Centorcelli looked at Life or Death, by Michael Robotham, and Susanna Calkins talked with her old friend and fellow author, Duane Swierczynski, about Canary. Links to all of these posts are here, and a full list of the 2016 Edgar rivals is here.

• And Ellen Hart’s Grave Soul (Minotaur) has won this year’s Minnesota Book Award for Genre Fiction. Also vying for that honor were The Devereaux Decision, by Steve McEllistrem (Calumet Editions); He’s Either Dead or in St. Paul, by D.B. Moon (Three Waters); and Season of Fear, by Brian Freeman (Quercus).

• You can probably forget about a Sopranos prequel.

• However, we can finally look forward to new entries in Caleb Carr’s popular series of historical mysteries featuring psychologist Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, first introduced in The Alienist (1994) and subsequently starring in The Angel of Darkness (1997). As Entertainment Weekly explains, “The first of the two books … is set 20 years after The Angel of Darkness, in 1915 New York City, and is ‘centered on nativist violence and terrorism during America’s involvement in World War I’ …The second book will be called The Strange Case of Miss Sarah X, and will be a prequel to the Alienist series. In this novel, the publisher explains, ‘A youthful Kreizler, after finishing his psychology training at Harvard, falls under the spell of William James, has his first run-in with [Theodore] Roosevelt, and delves into the secret life of Sara Howard, heroine of the first books.’”

• In a short “By the Book” interview for The New York Times Book Review, Britain’s Philip Kerr is asked, “Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?” His answer:

Heroes are always too heroic to be real. Or wholly sympathetic. James Bond is nicely flawed. Sadistic. Sexist. Bitter. I like that. I hate Sherlock Holmes in all his incarnations, written and especially on screen. I like Nick Charles because he drinks gimlets a lot, as I do. I am very fond of George Smiley. My favorite antihero used to be Highsmith’s Ripley. But all that now seems very old hat. I always had a soft spot for Shere Khan in “The Jungle Book.” O’Brien in “1984.” Captain Ahab, of course. Alec d’Urberville—naturally. Mr. Hyde in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Edmund in “King Lear”—we have much in common. Mr. Kurtz. Mrs. Danvers—can’t help liking her. And dear, dear Iago.

• From The Spy Command comes news that Peter Janson-Smith has died at age 93. The blog reminds us that Janson-Smith was “Ian Fleming’s literary agent and a behind-the-scenes figure in the success of the literary James Bond … [He] helped raise the visibility of Fleming’s original novels and short stories during the author’s lifetime. After Fleming’s death, eventually he became the chairman of Glidrose, now known as Ian Fleming Publications. In that capacity, Janson-Smith helped launch the 007 continuation stories penned by John Gardner and Raymond Benson that ran from the early 1980s into the early 2000s.” Benson himself, in a Facebook posting, calls Janson-Smith “a mentor, a teacher, a friend, and someone I called my ‘English dad.’ Peter had a long, distinguished career as a literary agent in England. He was Ian Fleming’s agent as well as Eric Ambler’s and [the agent for] many other great authors. He sold Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange. He was the trustee for Winnie the Pooh. So many accomplishments, too many to name here.” More here.

• Library of America’s latest hardcover release, Ross Macdonald: Three Novels of the Early 1960s, edited by Tom Nolan, isn’t due out until later this week, but it has already received a rave from The Washington Post’s Dennis Drabble.

• If you happen to be in London on Thursday, April 28—Ian Fleming’s birthday (he was born in 1908)—consider participating in a special celebration set to include both a walking tour and guest appearances by people involved behind the scenes with the James Bond films.

• The role of food in the Bond and Philip Marlowe novels.

• Organizers of this year’s Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (July 21-24 in Harrogate, England) have chosen P.D. James’ 1972 novel, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, as the convention’s Big Read for 2016. “The Big Read initiative,” explains Shotsmag Confidential, “aims to encourage as many people as possible to celebrate great crime writing by reading the same novel at the same time. An Unsuitable Job for a Woman introduces Cordelia Gray, the first modern female detective in crime fiction.” More information on this subject can be found here.

• Batman teams up with The Avengers? Count on it!

• Here’s a private-detective movie from way back in 1973 that I have never heard of, much less watched. Unfortunately, critic Peter Hanson labels it “boring, episodic, and stupid, ideal only for the most lascivious of viewers.” I guess that counts me out …

• As President Obama’s time in the White House nears its end, there are a whole lot of people becoming nostalgic for his steady and thoughtful leadership—perhaps because some of the folks hoping to fill his shoes appear so unsuitable, even dangerous. GQ magazine editor Jim Nelson writes: “With Obama, each thoughtful step of the way, from his soaring acceptance speech (‘The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep …’) to his epic speeches on race and religion, his responses to the shootings in Tucson and Newtown, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the opening of Cuba (‘Todos somos Americanos!’), and countless other momentous occasions, he knew how to speak to our better angels at a time when it was hard to locate any angels.”

• Well, it’s about damn time! Television Obscurities brings word that on July 12, Shout! Factory will release The Defenders: Season 1, a nine-DVD set containing all 32 episodes from the introductory season of The Defenders, the much-lauded legal drama starring E.G. Marshall (later of The Bold Ones) and Robert Reed (The Brady Bunch). The Defenders ultimately earned a four-season run on CBS-TV, as well as multiple awards; yet Television Obscurities says “it was perhaps too topical and controversial to thrive in syndication, and likely hasn’t been aired anywhere since the late 1960s or early 1970s.” The standard retail price for these DVDs will be $44.99.

• The lineup of guest authors scheduled to attend this year’s third annual Mystery Writers Key West Fest (June 10-12 in Key West, Florida) isn’t shabby at all. Included will be Robert K. Tanenbaum, Timothy Hallinan, Sandra Balzo, James O. Born, Heather Graham, Lisa Black, Don Bruns, Michael Haskins, Jake Hinkson, Victoria Landis, and Rick Ollerman. Click here to register.

• Finally, and a bit belatedly, we wish farewell to Gary Shulze, who for more than 14 years—until it was sold in March—operated the Once Upon a Crime Bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his wife, Pat Frovarp. He died on April 6 at age 66. The Star Tribune newspaper recalls that Shulze “had been diagnosed with leukemia in 2007, and it returned two years ago.” It goes on to quote Twin Cities mystery writer Jesse Chandler as saying, “Gary loved books, he loved Pat, and he loved Once Upon a Crime. His motto was ‘One more book never hurts.’” (Hat tip to Bill Crider.)

Let Me Be Brief

• My best experience thus far in April? Finally meeting Scottish author Philip Kerr, who I have interviewed twice via e-mail (see here and here), but have never talked with in person. Until today, that is, when he visited my hometown of Seattle to sign copies of his new Bernie Gunther novel, The Other Side of Silence, at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop. Before he began inking title pages, Kerr talked with a small group of devoted readers (mostly men, if that means anything) about how he researches and composes his award-winning World War II-era series. In the course of it, Kerr—dressed in jeans and a dark sport jacket, with a long blue scarf wrapped around his neck and a cup of Starbucks coffee at hand—mentioned that if he had the opportunity to meet just one Nazi leader, he’d like it to be Joseph Goebbels, who in addition to being Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister was also a published novelist; that the plot of his next Gunther yarn, Prussian Blue, includes a murder at Berghof, Hitler’s residence in the Bavarian Alps; that he doesn’t maintain a detailed chronology of his protagonist’s history, believing the wise-cracking Gunther should be allowed some inconsistencies and prevarications in the stories he tells other people about his life; and that HBO-TV is considering launching a series based on his Gunther adventures. I’ve read every one of Kerr’s 11 Gunther books, so was more than a bit pleased to walk away from today’s bookstore encounter carrying a hardcover copy of The Other Side of Silence, signed to me from “Phil Kerr” and including the mischevious message, “Bernie says hi.”

• This is a most promising development, indeed: The Hollywood Reporter states that “The upcoming HBO drama [The Deuce] from David Simon has tapped novelists Megan Abbott and Lisa Lutz as new writers on the series. They’ll join current writers George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and Simon, who together penned the pilot. The project, which was given a series order in January, stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Franco and is in pre-production in New York. It follows the story of the legalization and subsequent rise of the porn industry in New York’s Times Square from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s, exploring the rough-and-tumble world that existed there until the rise of HIV, the violence of the cocaine epidemic, and the renewed real-estate market all ended the bawdy turbulence.”

• A post in Mystery Fanfare about forthcoming offerings from the British U.S. streaming service Acorn TV mentions that Season 9 of Murdoch Mysteries—the Canadian series based on Maureen Jennings’ novels about Victorian-era Toronto police detective William Murdoch—includes an episode in which former Star Trek captain William Shatner plays humorist Mark Twain. In the video below, Murdoch Mysteries lead Yannick Bisson explains that Shatner’s guest spot came about as a result of a series of Twitter communications.



• Delicious Foods, James Hannaham’s 2015 Gothic crime novel, has won the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

• Glenn Harper, who usually writes the International Noir Fiction blog, has a good piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books about Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis’ tetralogy of thrillers featuring Danish nurse Nina Borg (The Considerate Killer).

• Someday I hope there will be crime and mystery tales included among the nominees for the Sarah Awards for audio fiction.

• And yesterday I noted that author Craig McDonald said, in a Facebook post, that his next Hector Lassiter novel will be titled Three Chords & the Truth. McDonald subsequently sent me a link to this interview he did with Steve Powell of The Venetian Vase, in which the handsome cover from that new book is featured.

Appointment on the Riviera

There aren’t many crime-fictionists (or authors, in general) whose books I grab up as soon as I spot them and immerse myself in immediately, but Philip Kerr is certainly among that select group. As I mentioned in a 2010 post I put together after first interviewing the Scottish novelist, his March Violets (1989), the book that introduced World War II-era Berlin homicide investigator Bernie Gunther, “was one of the earliest historical mysteries I remember reading.” And I’ve gladly followed the Gunther tales ever since—including his brand-new The Other Side of Silence (Marian Wood/Putnam).

Writing today on the Kirkus Reviews Web site, I explain that Silence begins with our cynical and despairing, Nazi-hating “hero”—now pushing 60 and working as the concierge at a lavish hotel on the French Riviera—trying to commit suicide. From there, the book takes off in a very different direction, combining elements of the traditional mystery story with the twisting gambits espionage fiction.

Resigned to the tedium of survival, Gunther heads back to the Grand Hôtel and resumes his concierge duties (consisting primarily of “making restaurant reservations, booking taxis and boats, coordinating porter service, shooing away prostitutes—which isn’t as easy as it sounds; these days only American women can afford to look like prostitutes—and giving directions to witless tourists who can’t read a map and don’t speak French”). However, he won’t be able to pick up his life where he left off. That’s due in part to the sudden appearance at Cap Ferrat of a figure from his past: Harold Heinz Hebel, who Gunther once knew better as mass-murdering Gestapo officer Harold Hennig. In addition, one of Gunther’s regular partners for evening games of bridge, a secretive Italian casino manager named Antimo Spinola, has been murdered, and Kerr’s man—sounding like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon—insists “there’s an unwritten rule in bridge that when your partner gets killed you’re supposed to try and find out who did it.”

As if these challenges weren’t enough to keep Gunther’s mind off suicide, there’s also his search for a blackmailer targeting another local resident, W. Somerset Maugham.

You can enjoy the complete review here.

FOLLOW-UP: A reader asked me to name my five favorite Bernie Gunther novels (so far). Here they are, in order of their publication:

• March Violets (1989)
• A Quiet Flame (2008)
• If the Dead Rise Not (2009)
• Prague Fatale (2011)
• The Lady from Zagreb (2015)

There’s every possibility that The Other Side of Silence will wind up on my list of top 2016 crime-fiction releases. But I won’t make that decision until much later in the year.

Bullet Points: Another Earth Day Edition

• Les Edgerton has posted a thoughtful, moving piece on the Out of the Gutter Web site about author-editor Cortright McMeel, who reportedly committed suicide last week. McMeel was the founder of Murdaland, a high-quality publication devoted to crime fiction that (sadly) lasted only two issues. He was also the author of a novel titled Short and “the force behind Denver’s Noir@Bar.” There are links to other McMeel tributes at the bottom of Edgerton’s piece.

• I don’t think I had seen this interview with writer Rex Stout before today. Conducted by Michael Bourne, the exchange was originally published back in 1973.

• Speaking of interviews worth noticing, Click here to read the results of J. Sydney Jones’ conversation with South African novelist Jassy Mackenzie, author of Pale Horses, her fourth outing for private eye Jade de Jong, which was just published by Soho Crime.

• And Philip Kerr talks with Mystery Scene’s Oline Cogdill about his acclaimed, World War II-era Bernie Gunther series, its latest entry, A Man Without Breath (Putnam), and the “strangest thing” his research into that time period has unearthed. “I find strange things all the time,” Kerr says. “It’s a period that is full of strange things. That’s what makes it interesting. I remember a time many years ago when I went to a place called Wewelsburg, where Himmler bought a castle that was to be the ‘spiritual HQ’ of the SS. It was also the smallest concentration camp in Germany. [Eight hundred] Soviet POWs were worked to death in the place. It’s now a youth hostel. I stayed there on my own one night. While I was there I discovered that the little village near the castle is still

used for SS reunions; that was an uncomfortable revelation to me--that there are plenty of people for whom Nazism still means something important.” You’ll find Cogdill’s interview here.

• Did you know that you can watch the entire run of Columbia Pictures’ 1943 Batman serial on YouTube? The 15 installments, starring Lewis Wilson, Douglas Croft, and J. Carrol Naish, begin here with a chapter titled “The Electric Brain.”

• Are you watching the three-part miniseries, The Bletchly Circle?

• The public voting process in this year’s Spinetingler Awards competition will continue through the end of April. There are six categories of nominees, including Best Novel: New Voice, Best Anthology/Short Story Collection, and Best Cover. If you haven’t yet cast a ballot, feel free to do so by clicking here.

• We’re nearing the end of Gerald So’s month-long crime poetry celebration in his blog The 5-2. If you haven’t been keeping up, never fear: the full collection of contributor links can be found here.

• Also still running is “The Scavenger,” the original tale from Christopher Mills and Rick Burchett’s crime-fiction Webcomic, Gravedigger. Today’s installment--No. 12 out of 28--can be enjoyed here. If you haven’t been following “The Scavenger,” you can catch up, beginning right here.

• Was Manhunt the “best crime-fiction magazine ever”?

• This month marks 16 years since the debut of Her Majesty’s Secret Servant, a Web site devoted to all things James Bond-ish. More here.

• Thank goodness last week’s extensive police hunt for two Boston Marathon bombers ended within a matter of days, and with one of the suspects--a naturalized U.S. citizen--being captured alive (and soon to be tried in federal court). As the search was underway, though, Read Me Deadly produced a post looking at “a small selection of Boston-related mysteries” that’s still worth checking out.

• A bit of cool history: “Tiny pieces of California Gold Rush history fetched big bucks at a Reno auction of Western Americana. The Jack Totheroh Collection of some 200 gold coins privately made in San Francisco in the 1850s sold for $865,000, while the Bergen-Istvan Collection of about 50 similar gold coins went for $252,000 ... According to historians, the rare coins in 25 cent, 50 cent, and dollar denominations were struck by jewelers from 1852 to 1857 when there was a shortage of small change in California. Historians say while banks apparently didn’t accept them, they were used at some San Francisco businesses. They also became popular as souvenirs as early as 1853.” I’d love to have one of those babies.

• TV Guide has been celebrating its 60th anniversary all month long. I used to be a TV Guide junkie, and I still own a stack of Fall Preview editions from the 1970s and ’80s. However, I haven’t bought an issue for years, the last time being shortly after the format switched from digest to full-size magazine in 2005 and TV Guide pretty much disappeared from grocery store checkout stands. Consequently, I missed seeing its recent list of “TV’s 60 Nastiest Villains,” which included The One-Armed Man from The Fugitive, Al Sweargengen from Deadwood, Nina Myers from 24, Al Capone from The Untouchables>, The Joker from Batman, and Number Two from The Prisoner.

• The term “pulp” may be inappropriately used here, but I’m still looking forward to getting my mitts on a copy of Black Pulp (CreateSpace), the new “anthology of original stories featuring black characters in leading roles in stories running the genre gamut.” Contributors to this paperback include Walter Mosley, Joe R. Lansdale, Gary Phillips, Mel Odom, Ron Fortier, and Gar Anthony Haywood.

• The latest edition of the podcast I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere tackles that ever-pressing question, “Who is a Sherlockian?”

• I’ve never had much respect for USA Today. I find it to be a shallow newspaper, directed mostly at people with short attention spans. However, I was interested last week in news that the paper’s founder, Al Neuharth, had died at age 89. What struck me most was a statement he made during a 1996 interview with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies: “There’s nothing [more] I’d want to do with my life than to be in the news business. I think that gives us a window on the world that you cannot have in any other business or profession.” As a veteran reporter myself, I know how that feels.

• Recently, I’ve been reading Jim Steinmeyer’s Who Was Dracula?: Bram Stoker’s Trail of Blood, which tries, in part, to identify the inspirations for Stoker’s bloodthirsty Transylvanian count. The author sums up his findings in this Huffington Post slideshow, and although I despise slideshows on the Web (why can’t we just get all of the information on a single page?), I suggest you look this one over. Again, though, I hate slideshows. Let me make that point crystal clear.

• This being the 43rd annual celebration of Earth Day, you should look over Janet Rudolph’s list of environment-related mysteries, as well as her updated rundown of “reservoir noir” (“books that deal with intentional flooding of towns and villages because of building dams and reservoirs for water supply, irrigation, power, and other reasons ...”).

• Finally, my old college friend, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Matt Wuerker, has a new page up in Politico devoted to his “most environmentally inspired cartoons.”