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The best-selling author of 20 novels, Philip Kerr has won a devoted following-and there are none more ardent than those who devour his Bernie Gunther series. In 1934, Bernie found himself in Berlin, where he was caught up in intrigue surrounding Hitler, America, and the upcoming Olympiad. Two decades later, Bernie surfaces in Havana. But an old associate has appeared there as well-and might spell trouble of a decidedly deadly nature.Tags
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Berlin, 1934, is one of the characters in this gripping thriller. The city is here in exquisite and exceptional detail. The incremental Nazi oppression and the horror that went with it This is the sixth in Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series and the first I’ve read. I’ll be reading more.
Gunther is a tough, cynical and wise-cracking ex-homicide detective. If you thought Lee Child’s Reacher or Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe were cynical and hard men, wait until you meet Bernie Gunther. He’s ruthless, unconventional but has a moral compass that ensures he stays on the road of what’s right.
He’s fallen out with the hierarchy and so is he’s the detective at one of Berlin and Europe’s most prestigious hotels, the Adlon. show more
There’s been a murder but the police stop investigating when they find out the victim is Jewish. Gunther continued the quest to find out what happened which leads to an intriguing chain of events that has many twists and turns.
US journalist Noreen Charalambides is in Berlin to research a story about Nazi hypocrisy of promoting the forthcoming Olympic games but banning Jews from competing. She helps Gunther uncover the truth. But just as he connects the pieces of the puzzle, he is kidnapped. He survives – how he gets out of that jam is a surprise but believable.
The second part of the novel is set in Cuba in 1954. Kerr uses his forensic observational skill to great effect. Pre-revolution Cuba run by gangs of organised criminals is portrayed where violence and fear abound. Noreen is there but no longer Mrs Charalambides which isn’t the only difference.
When a gang leader is murdered, Gunther is hired. The surprises continue right up to the last page.
Aficionados of Weimar Berlin will enjoy this well-written thriller that deceives you; just when you think you’ve got it worked out, there’s a surprise to keep you guessing. show less
Gunther is a tough, cynical and wise-cracking ex-homicide detective. If you thought Lee Child’s Reacher or Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe were cynical and hard men, wait until you meet Bernie Gunther. He’s ruthless, unconventional but has a moral compass that ensures he stays on the road of what’s right.
He’s fallen out with the hierarchy and so is he’s the detective at one of Berlin and Europe’s most prestigious hotels, the Adlon. show more
There’s been a murder but the police stop investigating when they find out the victim is Jewish. Gunther continued the quest to find out what happened which leads to an intriguing chain of events that has many twists and turns.
US journalist Noreen Charalambides is in Berlin to research a story about Nazi hypocrisy of promoting the forthcoming Olympic games but banning Jews from competing. She helps Gunther uncover the truth. But just as he connects the pieces of the puzzle, he is kidnapped. He survives – how he gets out of that jam is a surprise but believable.
The second part of the novel is set in Cuba in 1954. Kerr uses his forensic observational skill to great effect. Pre-revolution Cuba run by gangs of organised criminals is portrayed where violence and fear abound. Noreen is there but no longer Mrs Charalambides which isn’t the only difference.
When a gang leader is murdered, Gunther is hired. The surprises continue right up to the last page.
Aficionados of Weimar Berlin will enjoy this well-written thriller that deceives you; just when you think you’ve got it worked out, there’s a surprise to keep you guessing. show less
"If the Dead Rise Not", the sixth novel in the Bernie Gunther series follows the pattern of his previous novels with a setting in Nazi Germany in 1934 with the plot resumed in Havana, Cuba in 1954 during the reign of Fulgencio Batista.
In 1934 Bernie has recently resigned from his position as a homicide investigator with the Berlin police department and taken a job as the house dick at the Hotel Adlon, the premier hotel in Berlin owned by Hedda and Louis Adlon. One of the recurring themes of the novel is the exchange of favors among the characters beginning with Bernie offering to help out a sometime Jewish lover, Frieda Bamburger, who wants to leave Berlin for Hamburg, harboring the illusion that she will be able to cover up her show more heritage by virtue of her marriage to a Gentile husband. Bernie, as it turns out, also needs a favor. He has a Jewish grandmother who needs to be "Aryanized". In return for all of these favors, Bernie is called upon to help the police investigate the drowning death of an individual who may have been murdered and who was employed as a laborer on one of the projects connected with the construction of the facilities for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
So the plot is a little slow to unwind, but soon takes off as Gunther gets enmeshed in various investigations related to the Olympic project and an effort to persuade the American Olympic Committee headed by Avery Brundage to boycott the games. There is corruption galore including the Gestapo but mainly centering around the activities of an American Jew, Max Reles, who is fluent in German and fluent in eliminating anyone who gets in the way of his making a boatload of dough via construction contracts for firms he owns. Reles has also been done a favor by Gunther who, as a favor to his hotel employers, has secured the services of a high class prostitute with secretarial skills to work for Reles who has lost his former Jewish secretary who has vamoosed to Danzig again with the help of Gunther.
The first part of the book culminates in a denouement aboard a boat in which Gunther and Reles face off with Max holding apparently holding all the cards and all the weapons. I will leave the details to the reader to discover the outcome.
The second part of the book does a fast forward to 1954 and Bernie's latest place of exile, Havana, having found Buenos Aires under the Peron regime a little too hot for his well being. He is using his Argentinian passport under the unlikely name of Carlos Hausner. Thanks to a deus ex machina in the person of his lover from 1934 Berlin, Noreen Charalambides (nee Eisner), popping up in Havana and living in Ernest Hemingway's home, Kerr picks up the threads from Part One and Gunther's one time nemesis Max Reles reappears, now in the hotels/gambling business and associated with organized crime figures, most prominently, Meyer Lansky. What ensues is right out of The Godfather II. As always, I won't spoil it for the reader by relating how all of this sorts itself out. I will say that Kerr does the near impossible by undoing all the tangled threads of this story and there is no shortage of action and tension in the telling. For Bernie Gunther fans "If the Dead Rise Not" rises to the occasion and for fans of detective stories cum historical fiction this is definitely a winner. show less
In 1934 Bernie has recently resigned from his position as a homicide investigator with the Berlin police department and taken a job as the house dick at the Hotel Adlon, the premier hotel in Berlin owned by Hedda and Louis Adlon. One of the recurring themes of the novel is the exchange of favors among the characters beginning with Bernie offering to help out a sometime Jewish lover, Frieda Bamburger, who wants to leave Berlin for Hamburg, harboring the illusion that she will be able to cover up her show more heritage by virtue of her marriage to a Gentile husband. Bernie, as it turns out, also needs a favor. He has a Jewish grandmother who needs to be "Aryanized". In return for all of these favors, Bernie is called upon to help the police investigate the drowning death of an individual who may have been murdered and who was employed as a laborer on one of the projects connected with the construction of the facilities for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
So the plot is a little slow to unwind, but soon takes off as Gunther gets enmeshed in various investigations related to the Olympic project and an effort to persuade the American Olympic Committee headed by Avery Brundage to boycott the games. There is corruption galore including the Gestapo but mainly centering around the activities of an American Jew, Max Reles, who is fluent in German and fluent in eliminating anyone who gets in the way of his making a boatload of dough via construction contracts for firms he owns. Reles has also been done a favor by Gunther who, as a favor to his hotel employers, has secured the services of a high class prostitute with secretarial skills to work for Reles who has lost his former Jewish secretary who has vamoosed to Danzig again with the help of Gunther.
The first part of the book culminates in a denouement aboard a boat in which Gunther and Reles face off with Max holding apparently holding all the cards and all the weapons. I will leave the details to the reader to discover the outcome.
The second part of the book does a fast forward to 1954 and Bernie's latest place of exile, Havana, having found Buenos Aires under the Peron regime a little too hot for his well being. He is using his Argentinian passport under the unlikely name of Carlos Hausner. Thanks to a deus ex machina in the person of his lover from 1934 Berlin, Noreen Charalambides (nee Eisner), popping up in Havana and living in Ernest Hemingway's home, Kerr picks up the threads from Part One and Gunther's one time nemesis Max Reles reappears, now in the hotels/gambling business and associated with organized crime figures, most prominently, Meyer Lansky. What ensues is right out of The Godfather II. As always, I won't spoil it for the reader by relating how all of this sorts itself out. I will say that Kerr does the near impossible by undoing all the tangled threads of this story and there is no shortage of action and tension in the telling. For Bernie Gunther fans "If the Dead Rise Not" rises to the occasion and for fans of detective stories cum historical fiction this is definitely a winner. show less
World-weary, wise-cracking Bernie Gunther is a man so hard-boiled he makes his rivals look gently poached. Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe had it easy. Sure, they had to contend with corrupt cops and shifty dames with an eye for the main chance but, unlike Gunther, they didn't have the Nazis to worry about.
Forced to resign as a homicide detective with Berlin's Criminal Police for refusing to demonstrate support for the Nazis, Bernie is now house detective at the famous Adlon Hotel. It is 1934 and Berlin is preparing for the Olympics, while across Germany, civil liberties are being crushed, freedom by freedom, although few people can have any idea of the horrors to come. Even Gunther, no slouch when it comes to abject cynicism, can barely show more believe the incremental brutalities that Berlin's Jews are facing.
The discovery of two bodies - one a businessman and the other a Jewish boxer - involves Bernie in the lives of two hotel guests. One is a beautiful left-wing journalist intent on persuading America to boycott the Berlin Olympiad; the other is a German-Jewish gangster who plans to use the Olympics to enrich himself and the Chicago mob. As events unfold, Bernie uncovers a vast labour and construction racket designed to take advantage of the huge sums the Nazis are prepared to spend to showcase the new Germany to the world.
The story comes full circle in 1950s Cuba where the main protagonists meet again in Batista's Havana, just after Castro is jailed for a failed attack on a barracks. Gunther meets the journalist and the gangster again and also bumps into the mobsters running the lucrative casino business. He is asked to investigate another murder, at the request of the Mob and things are not as straight forward as anyone thinks.
If the Dead Rise Not is the sixth book in Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir series. I’ll look forward to reading the others. show less
Forced to resign as a homicide detective with Berlin's Criminal Police for refusing to demonstrate support for the Nazis, Bernie is now house detective at the famous Adlon Hotel. It is 1934 and Berlin is preparing for the Olympics, while across Germany, civil liberties are being crushed, freedom by freedom, although few people can have any idea of the horrors to come. Even Gunther, no slouch when it comes to abject cynicism, can barely show more believe the incremental brutalities that Berlin's Jews are facing.
The discovery of two bodies - one a businessman and the other a Jewish boxer - involves Bernie in the lives of two hotel guests. One is a beautiful left-wing journalist intent on persuading America to boycott the Berlin Olympiad; the other is a German-Jewish gangster who plans to use the Olympics to enrich himself and the Chicago mob. As events unfold, Bernie uncovers a vast labour and construction racket designed to take advantage of the huge sums the Nazis are prepared to spend to showcase the new Germany to the world.
The story comes full circle in 1950s Cuba where the main protagonists meet again in Batista's Havana, just after Castro is jailed for a failed attack on a barracks. Gunther meets the journalist and the gangster again and also bumps into the mobsters running the lucrative casino business. He is asked to investigate another murder, at the request of the Mob and things are not as straight forward as anyone thinks.
If the Dead Rise Not is the sixth book in Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir series. I’ll look forward to reading the others. show less
This book is awful. Having read Philip Kerr’s first three novels in the anthology edition, Berlin Noir, I knew what to expect, so I was not really surprised that I didn’t enjoy this book. It had the same things that I liked and hated in the first novels, and I chose to read it because there are some things I like in it.
Kerr’s historical description is detailed, concrete and sufficiently accurate factually that I’m willing to credit him with likely getting the life details right. So if you want to know how one negotiates life under a fascist bureaucracy, and that’s the sort of thing I am interested in, then there is a reason to read Kerr’s fiction. Of course, Kerr’s protagonist, Bernie Gunther, does much more than show more negotiate everyday life – he’s kicked out of the police for his support of the liberal goals of the Weimar Republic, but feels compelled as a hotel detective to look into the criminals in the hotel who are profiteering with the Nazi government. Under a tough exterior, he has an honest heart, but one he has to hide to survive the corrupt times. His frequently cynical, sarcastic comments can be read as an expression of the conflict he feels.
Between the seedy bars and Alexanderplatz police station, the Olympic construction site and the Adlon Hotel, he covers a lot of Berlin, and later covers similar ground in Cuba. He shows the petty and major corruption, the ambitions and the avoidances that Berliners adopt to get by or to profit under the violent, anti-Semitic and racist nationalism of the Nazis. He paints a picture that is vile and gritty with no sense of hope except to just get through until things change. I imagine that that’s how a lot of people did try to survive.
Unfortunately, Kerr overdoes the historical detail, so some passages read as if he found some interesting descriptions in his research, and wants to cram it all in. Curious as I am about the period, I don’t need exaggerated architectural description to get the point.
What I don’t like about this book, and the earlier ones I read, are the clumsy, overdone “hardboiled” style in which it is narrated. Kerr adopts the most obvious characteristics of Raymond Chandler’s style without restraint, and embellishes them with grotesque exaggeration and unrelenting sexism. Written in the first-person voice of narrator Bernie Gunther, it’s inescapable and it’s too much. Where Chandler used a sarcastic wit to illuminate his character’s point of view, Kerr turns the style into caricature. By half way through the book, I began to skip the satirical asides because they added nothing to the characters or the storyline.
Kerr’s characters are little better. They are stereotypes with little depth or development. When they do something unexpected, rather than think that there is a new side to a complex personality, I just think, where did that come from? The relationship that develops between Gunther and the American hotel guest merely seems absurd and unbelievable. The introduction of a string of American characters seems more of an attempt to build up readership in the USA rather than anything necessary to the storyline.
I started the book as a light alternative to the fairly heavy novel I had been reading, but it’s not light or a pleasure to read. So I’m done with Philip Kerr. I’ll learn about Germany under the Nazis elsewhere. show less
Kerr’s historical description is detailed, concrete and sufficiently accurate factually that I’m willing to credit him with likely getting the life details right. So if you want to know how one negotiates life under a fascist bureaucracy, and that’s the sort of thing I am interested in, then there is a reason to read Kerr’s fiction. Of course, Kerr’s protagonist, Bernie Gunther, does much more than show more negotiate everyday life – he’s kicked out of the police for his support of the liberal goals of the Weimar Republic, but feels compelled as a hotel detective to look into the criminals in the hotel who are profiteering with the Nazi government. Under a tough exterior, he has an honest heart, but one he has to hide to survive the corrupt times. His frequently cynical, sarcastic comments can be read as an expression of the conflict he feels.
Between the seedy bars and Alexanderplatz police station, the Olympic construction site and the Adlon Hotel, he covers a lot of Berlin, and later covers similar ground in Cuba. He shows the petty and major corruption, the ambitions and the avoidances that Berliners adopt to get by or to profit under the violent, anti-Semitic and racist nationalism of the Nazis. He paints a picture that is vile and gritty with no sense of hope except to just get through until things change. I imagine that that’s how a lot of people did try to survive.
Unfortunately, Kerr overdoes the historical detail, so some passages read as if he found some interesting descriptions in his research, and wants to cram it all in. Curious as I am about the period, I don’t need exaggerated architectural description to get the point.
What I don’t like about this book, and the earlier ones I read, are the clumsy, overdone “hardboiled” style in which it is narrated. Kerr adopts the most obvious characteristics of Raymond Chandler’s style without restraint, and embellishes them with grotesque exaggeration and unrelenting sexism. Written in the first-person voice of narrator Bernie Gunther, it’s inescapable and it’s too much. Where Chandler used a sarcastic wit to illuminate his character’s point of view, Kerr turns the style into caricature. By half way through the book, I began to skip the satirical asides because they added nothing to the characters or the storyline.
Kerr’s characters are little better. They are stereotypes with little depth or development. When they do something unexpected, rather than think that there is a new side to a complex personality, I just think, where did that come from? The relationship that develops between Gunther and the American hotel guest merely seems absurd and unbelievable. The introduction of a string of American characters seems more of an attempt to build up readership in the USA rather than anything necessary to the storyline.
I started the book as a light alternative to the fairly heavy novel I had been reading, but it’s not light or a pleasure to read. So I’m done with Philip Kerr. I’ll learn about Germany under the Nazis elsewhere. show less
A good, intriguing set of mysteries one set in Berlin before the 1936 Olympics and the other in pre-Castro Cuba. Manages to capture both eras well. Bernie Gunther is an entertaining companion through these mysteries.
An extremely well-researched novel set mainly in 1934 Berlin and partly 1954 Havana. Bernie Gunther is an ex-cop and anti-Naxi working as head of security at the famous Adlon Hotel in Berlin. Investigating the death of a guest, he finds himself caught up in powerful groups trying to corrupt the contracts for the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Highly recommended.
The first two-thirds of If the Dead Rise Not is set in Berlin in 1934. Hitler’s National Socialist Party has been in power for 18 months which made Bernie Gunther’s life as a homicide detective untenable because he is a supporter of the previous regime. So he is now a house detective for an up-market hotel. In that role he becomes embroiled in several investigations including gangster involvement in the bidding for building contracts for the upcoming Olympiad. In the second book last third of the book we jump to Cuba in 1954 where Bernie is playing with model trains and having sex with a selection of prostitutes when some of the people from 1934 reprise their roles bit-players in Bernie’s life in a sequence of events that had, to show more my ears, less to do with crime fiction and more to do with Bernie proving some more how witty and sarcastic he can be.
If I had read the excellent review at Crime Scraps before embarking on this book I wouldn’t have. Embarked on the book that is. Because 30’s hardboiled detectives in the style of Chandler, Hammett et al is just not my cup of tea. Where that reviewer, Uriah Robinson, sees a sharp first person narrative and clever lines I see a bunch of blokes who exhibit a blasé attitude to violence and a leering, lecherous quality that I find tiresome.
So my first problem is the style of the book which, it turns out, I still don’t like even though it was conceivable that my tastes might have changed in the 20 or so years since I read a hardboiled PI novel.
Then we come to the fact it felt like two separate books rather than a single entity. The audio version of the book is 16 hours long. A little more than the last 6 hours takes place in Cuba after the rather abrupt ending to the first part. A handful of the same characters are present, including the woman he fell in love with and an American gangster who nearly killed him, but I’ve seen separate books in a series have more connection with each other than the two parts of this book. Also, the Cuba portion of the book incorporated even more real characters from history in a way that I find trite. As soon as we jumped to Cuba I was waiting for Ernest Hemingway to make an appearance. Which of course he did. Ho hum.
What I did like about the book was Kerr’s ability to create a sense of time and place. His early period Nazi Germany is oppressive and sinister and there is a tangible quality to the sense that no one comprehending how bad things will get. It really is quite chilling. I found the Cuba portion a little more ‘hokey’ but I admit that’s at least partly because I was, by then, over it. And to be fair, when he wasn’t belting people or describing every woman he encountered in terms of how much he would like to have sex with her Bernie was quite witty and had random moments of moral clarity. I have to say too that Jeff Harding’s narration was a perfect match for the tone and style of the book.
To be abundantly clear I am in the minority in my feelings towards this book and if there was any doubt If the Dead Rise Not won the 2009 CWA Ellis Peters Award for historical fiction. show less
If I had read the excellent review at Crime Scraps before embarking on this book I wouldn’t have. Embarked on the book that is. Because 30’s hardboiled detectives in the style of Chandler, Hammett et al is just not my cup of tea. Where that reviewer, Uriah Robinson, sees a sharp first person narrative and clever lines I see a bunch of blokes who exhibit a blasé attitude to violence and a leering, lecherous quality that I find tiresome.
So my first problem is the style of the book which, it turns out, I still don’t like even though it was conceivable that my tastes might have changed in the 20 or so years since I read a hardboiled PI novel.
Then we come to the fact it felt like two separate books rather than a single entity. The audio version of the book is 16 hours long. A little more than the last 6 hours takes place in Cuba after the rather abrupt ending to the first part. A handful of the same characters are present, including the woman he fell in love with and an American gangster who nearly killed him, but I’ve seen separate books in a series have more connection with each other than the two parts of this book. Also, the Cuba portion of the book incorporated even more real characters from history in a way that I find trite. As soon as we jumped to Cuba I was waiting for Ernest Hemingway to make an appearance. Which of course he did. Ho hum.
What I did like about the book was Kerr’s ability to create a sense of time and place. His early period Nazi Germany is oppressive and sinister and there is a tangible quality to the sense that no one comprehending how bad things will get. It really is quite chilling. I found the Cuba portion a little more ‘hokey’ but I admit that’s at least partly because I was, by then, over it. And to be fair, when he wasn’t belting people or describing every woman he encountered in terms of how much he would like to have sex with her Bernie was quite witty and had random moments of moral clarity. I have to say too that Jeff Harding’s narration was a perfect match for the tone and style of the book.
To be abundantly clear I am in the minority in my feelings towards this book and if there was any doubt If the Dead Rise Not won the 2009 CWA Ellis Peters Award for historical fiction. show less
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Gunther se verá envuelto en una historia de corrupción que unirá a la cúpula nazi con los peores elementos del crimen americano, una situación que continuará incluso 20 años después, esta vez en la Cuba gobernada por Batista.
added by Pakoniet
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- Canonical title
- If the Dead Rise Not
- Original title
- If the Dead Rise Not
- Original publication date
- 2009
- People/Characters
- Bernie Gunther; Noreen Charalambides; Otto Trettin; Max Reles; Meyer Lansky
- Important places
- Berlin, Germany; Havana, Cuba
- Epigraph
- That I have fought with beasts at Ephesus after the manner of men, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not again? Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.
- FROM THE 1559 BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER - Dedication
- for Caradoc King
- First words*
- Het was zo'n geluid in de verte dat je niet meteen herkent: het kon een smerige, walmende stoomboot op de Spree zijn; of een trage locomotief die wordt gerangeerd onder het grote, glazen dak van het Anhalter-station; of de he... (show all)te, gretige adem van een enorme draak, alsof een van de stenen dinosaurussen in de dierentuin van Berlijn tot leven was gekomen en nu door de Wilhelmstrasse denderde.
- Last words*
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)De weinige tijd die ons nog rest.
- Original language
- English
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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