A Man Without Breath, By Philip Kerr (Marian Wood/G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Through nine Philip Kerr novels spanning the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and the subsequent pursuit and prosecution of some of its creators, lead character Bernie Gunther has become an old friend.
Each visit of the always wisecracking, sometimes compromised detective, private investigator and German soldier is eagerly awaited.
A year ago, I read Gunther’s then-latest adventure while in the hospital recovering from open-heart surgery. Bernie’s unabashed sass and defiance of authority ― Nazi authority ― were the perfect middle-of-the-night-can’t-sleep prescription to take my mind off the discomfort from my sawed-through and wired-back-together breastbone, momentarily at least.
Take my word for it. Such a diversion is not easy. But, then, that’s what friends do. Thank you, Bernie.
Kerr’s new Gunther chronicle, “A Man Without Breath,” is another visit from an old friend. This time, Gunther finds himself reporting directly to Joseph Goebbels ― Joey the Crip, Gunther calls the limping Nazi propaganda minister ― while investigating the massacre of thousands of Polish officers, allegedly by the Soviets.
Set in early 1943, immediately after Germany lost Stalingrad, Goebbels is trying to turn battlefield defeat into public-relations victory.
Early on, at a meeting with Goebbels, Gunther is at his irreverent best as he explains why the German minister probably lacks a sense of humor:
“For one, he was short and I’ve never yet met a short man who could laugh at himself as easily as a taller one; and that’s as true a picture of the world as anything you’ll find in Kant or Hegel.”
Kerr, a British writer who also does children’s books, started his Bernie Gunther series in 1989 with “March Violets.” The first three Gunther novels were packaged together in 1993 in the modern classic “Berlin Noir.”
Start there if you’re new to Bernie Gunther. Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe; Kerr and Gunther. It doesn’t get any better.
As Kerr got busy with other writing projects, he abandoned Gunther until 2006 when he published “The One From the Other.” Since then, in quick succession, Kerr has published five more Gunther novels, bouncing in time, taking the investigator to South America with Nazis trying to escape war crimes prosecution, to Cuba, back to Soviet prison camp, and to Germany for trials.
The new book fills one of the gaps in the early Gunther narrative.
While Gunther investigates the old massacre near Smolensk, a new killer emerges, leaving a trail of bodies.
At one point, Bernie explains his early career as a homicide detective to a visiting judge: “There used to be a law against that sort of thing, you know. When people killed other people, we put them in prison. Of course, that was before the war.”
An attraction of the Gunther books is how they ring true, in a “Ship of Fools” kind of way, to the times. Yes, Hitler and his henchmen clearly were monsters. But the view at the time wasn’t as unobstructed as it is now.
Kerr makes the monsters human, at least somewhat. In an earlier book, he wrote of Hermann Goering’s love of model trains. Hey! I like model trains.
That’s really the whole point. If Kerr and Gunther have a main message it’s that abnormal times can make even normal people do terrible things, and that groupthink, in all its forms, can be insidious.
Celebrate the squeaky wheels. Celebrate the Bernie Gunthers. Yes. They keep us honest.
(MCT)
