About the Book
"[Metropolis is] a perfect goodbye—and first hello—to its hero...Bernie Gunther has, at last, come home."—Washington PostNew York Times-bestselling author Philip Kerr treats readers to his beloved hero's origins, exploring Bernie Gunther's first weeks on Berlin's Murder Squad.Summer, 1928. Berlin, a city where nothing is verboten. In the night streets, political gangs wander, looking for fights. Daylight reveals a beleaguered populace barely recovering from the postwar inflation, often jobless, reeling from the reparations imposed by the victors. At central police HQ, the Murder Commission has its hands full. A killer is on the loose and though he scatters many clues, each is a dead end. It's almost as if he is taunting the cops. Meanwhile, the press is having a field day. This is what Bernie Gunther finds on his first day with the Murder Commisson. He's been taken on beacuse the people at the top have noticed him—they think he has the makings of a first-rate detective. But not just yet. Right now, he has to listen and learn. Metropolis, completed just before Philip Kerr's untimely death, is the capstone of a fourteen-book journey through the life of Kerr's signature character, Bernhard Genther, a sardonic and wisecracking homicide detective caught up in an increasingly Nazified Berlin police department. In many ways, it is Bernie's origin story and, as Kerr's last novel, it is also, alas, his end. Metropolis is also a tour of a city in chaos: of its seedy sideshows and sex clubs, of the underground gangs that run its rackets, and its bewildered citizens—the lost, the homeless, the abandoned. It is Berlin as it edges toward the new world order that Hitler will soo usher in. And Bernie? He's a quick study and he's learning a lot. Including, to his chagrin, that when push comes to shove, he isn't much better than the gangsters in doing whatever her must to get what he wants.
About the Author
For most novelists, the city where the action takes place is a backdrop or a stage set, nothing more than scenery. But the Berlin of Philip Kerr's stories is a character in the books - a personality as complex and troubled as his private-investigator protagonist. 'When I started writing I was after the character of the Berliner rather than the history of Berlin,' says Kerr. 'Berlin people have always been awkward-squad Germans, which is probably why I admire them. Hitler didn't like them at all, and Berliners are the same now as then - they haven't changed.'Read more here: philipkerr.org/about
