Metropolis by Philip Kerr

September 26, 2019

Metropolis by Philip Kerr

In 1928, the Weimar Republic is limping along as Germany tries to rebuild from the war.  Berlin is a wide open city, the nights filled with all manner of vice and violence.  Detective Bernie Gunther is moved from the vice section of the Berlin police force to the murder commission.  He and his mentor are assigned to investigate a series of murders of Berlin prostitutes – the killer not only kills the women but scalps them, too.  They suspect it may be an ex-soldier, someone who got a taste for killing in the war.  But the prostitute murderer is quickly forgotten when someone who calls himself Doktor Gnadenschuss (German for mercy shot) begins killing disabled German veterans.  After following up a number of dead end clues, Bernie begins to suspect that the killer is someone he knows.

The book title refers not only to Berlin but also to the film Metropolis, which is set in a utopian city that is beautiful on the surface, but hides a bleak underworld of the disadvantaged and the criminal.  Interestingly, Bernie has a meeting with Thea von Harbou, an actual German screenwriter who wrote the script for the classic movies Metropolis and M: A City Hunts a Murderer - Bernie gives Thea suggestions for the plot of the latter film.

With Philip Kerr’s untimely death in 2018, this is the last of the Bernie Gunther mysteries.  Bernie is a noir detective usually based in Berlin but Kerr took us around the world as we explored Bernie’s life and career both before and after World War II.  I loved this series and I’m so sad it’s over – both Kerr and Bernie will be sorely missed.  I waited until I could get the audiobook version, since John Lee does a wonderful job with the narration as he has done with so many of the Bernie Gunther novels.