Going against the grain—as usual—by writing an origin novel as his swan song, Kerr leaves his fans happy.
Kerr's final Bernie Gunther novel takes us back to 1928 and the beloved character's beginnings on Berlin's Murder Commission.
Drafted from Vice, Gunther finds himself on the trail of a prostitute killer who scalps his victims and then a serial murderer who is targeting disabled war veterans. Partly in desperation as the number of victims rises and partly to test a new sleuthing concept devised by his superior, Bernhard Weiss, Gunther agrees to go undercover posing as a klutz, or homeless veteran. His nerves are eased by his unexpected romance with a female makeup artist helping him with his street look. But with Nazism on the rise, Berlin is simmering with violence, cruelty, lies, and casual anti-Semitism. "Everyone who was sympathetic to the Nazis believed that a Jew was just a communist with a big nose and a gold watch," says Gunther in his first-person narration, referring to the supposed red ties of the mensch-y Weiss. Still, Gunther is lifted by his devotion to his job, perfect summer days that are "almost worthy of a short poem by Goethe," and bold new cultural directions. He comes into contact with Lotte Lenya (on a break from rehearsing The Threepenny Opera), artist George Grosz (drawing murder victims on public display in the police morgue, "Berlin's showhouse for the dead"), and scriptwriter Thea von Harbou, wife of Metropolis director Fritz Lang. With its lessons for the Trump era, this book is plenty timely. But completed shortly before the author's death, it is also one of Kerr's most congenial, beautifully controlled, and entertaining works. The banter is priceless.
Going against the grain—as usual—by writing an origin novel as his swan song, Kerr leaves his fans happy.Pub Date: April 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1889-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
You have seven days to live after reading this review. Is that your phone ringing?
First in a trilogy by a newcomer publishing house that promises high-class works from Japan.
Ring has sold three million copies in its native country, says Vertical, been filmed there, and the film remade here as a postmodern horror mystery released by DreamWorks as The Ring. In one month in 1990, four Japanese students who live fairly near each other die mysteriously of heart failure. Tomoko Oishi dies in the family kitchen, Shuichi Iwata on his motorcycle while waiting for the light to change at an intersection, and Haruko Tsuji and Takehiko Nomi in the front seat of a car while undressing for sexplay. All four have faces constricted with horror and seem to be pulling their heads off or blinding their vision. Tomoko happens to be the niece of Kazuyuki Asakawa, a journalist, who links all the deaths and sees a story in it. Japanese journalism has been through a heavy period of occult reports, and Asakawa’s editor only hopes it has all died down. A card Asakawa finds in Tomoko’s desk leads him to discover that all four victims had watched a video tape they’d been warned against viewing—a tape, as it happens, that’s something of a virus (in Asakawa, its horrific images cause sweat and shortness of breath). Then comes the message: Those who view these images are fated to die at this exact moment one week from now. If you do not wish to die, you must follow these instructions exactly . . . . Then the phone rings (hence Ring) and unspeakable bugs invade Asakawa until he slams down the receiver. Too late, though: he has a week to live. He brings in brainy Ruiji to help him, and Ruiji watches the tape. This stifling sense—is it an evil energy? Then Asakawa’s wife and daughter watch it . . . .
You have seven days to live after reading this review. Is that your phone ringing?Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-932234-00-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Vertical
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
A meticulously built mystery that follows a careful ascent toward a breaking point that will leave you breathless. It’s...
A dark, still figure, wearing long black robes and a hood, appears on the charming village green of Three Pines, a small Québec town; though at first it seems scary but harmless, it turns out to be something much more sinister.
The strange figure’s appearance coincides with a Halloween party at the local bistro, attended by the usual villagers but also four out-of-town guests. They are friends from the Université de Montréal who meet for a yearly reunion at the B&B in Three Pines. But this event actually happened months ago, and village resident Armand Gamache, now head of the Sûreté du Québec, is recounting the story from the witness stand in a courtroom suffering from oppressive summer heat. Gamache’s testimony becomes narrative, explaining how over the course of a few days the masked man grew into a fixture on the village green and morphed slowly into an omen. Gamache’s son-in-law and second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, is asked to research the “dark thing’s” back story after one of the B&B guests, a journalist, mentions that the figure reminds him of story he did on an old Spanish tradition, that of the “debt collector.” It becomes clear, as Gamache relays the events leading up to murder, that “someone in the village had done something so horrific that a Conscience had been called.” But did the dark thing come for a villager or for one of their guests? Conscience is an overarching theme in Penny’s latest, seeping into the courtroom narrative as Gamache grapples with an enemy much larger than the dark thing, a war he took on as the new Chief Superintendent. His victory depends on the outcome, and the path, of this murder trial. While certain installments in Penny’s bestselling series take Gamache and his team to the far reaches of Québec, others build their tension not with a chase but instead in the act of keeping still—this is one such book. The tension has never been greater, and Gamache has sat for months waiting, and waiting, to act, with Conscience watching close by.
A meticulously built mystery that follows a careful ascent toward a breaking point that will leave you breathless. It’s Three Pines as you have never seen it before.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-06619-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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