num_pages: 245
description: Hailed by Salman Rushdie as a "brilliantly innovative thriller-writer," Philip Kerr is the creator of taut, gripping, noir-tinged mysteries that are nothing short of spellbinding.The first book of the Berlin Noir trilogy, March Violets introduces readers to Bernie Gunther, an ex-policeman who thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin; until he turned freelance and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. Bernhard Gunther, a hard-boiled Berlin detective who specializes in tracking down missing persons — mostly Jews. He is summoned by a wealthy industrialist to find the murderer of his daughter and son-in-law, killed during the robbery of a priceless diamond necklace. Gunther quickly is catapulted into a major political scandal involving Hitler's two main henchmen, Goering and Himmler. The search for clues takes Gunther to morgues overflowing with Nazi victims; raucous nightclubs; the Olympic games where Jesse Owens tramples the theory of Aryan racial superiority; the boudoir of a famous actress; and finally to the Dachau concentration camp. Fights with Gestapo agents, shoot-outs with adulterers, run-ins with a variety of criminals, and dead bodies in unexpected places keep readers guessing to the very end. Hard-hitting, fast-paced, and richly detailed, March Violets is noir writing at its blackest and best.
language: English
title: March Violets
titlecomplete: March Violets (Bernie Gunther, #1)
characters: Inge Lorenz, Marlene Sahm, Hermann Göring, Grete Six Pfarr, Ilse Rudel, Heinrich Himmler, Bernhard Gunther, Haupthändler, Bruno Stahlecker, Hannah "Eva" Roedl, Hermann Six, Rienacker, Paul Pfarr, "Red" Dieter Helfferich
genres: Historical, Noir, Mystery, Germany, Detective, Thriller, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Crime
ratings_count: 16456
places: Berlin
series: Bernie Gunther
awards: awardedAt: 599644800000
name: CWA New Blood Dagger
publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons