Hardboiled Review: The Pale Criminal by Philip Kerr (1990)

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The Pale Criminal is the second book in Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir series. I'm still not convinced that the Bernie Gunther stories are true noir. Noir-ish perhaps, since we are dealing with Nazis. Bernie is closer the Raymond Chandler definition of a detective

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor.

I'll admit you'll find some Mike Hammer mixed in with his Philip Marlowe but in the end even Mike Hammer, for all his rough justice, has a code and is a man of honor. With Bernie walking the mean streets of Berlin, I put him solidly in the hardboiled camp.

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It is summer 1938 and the story is set against the Munich Conference, the outcome of which will determine if Germany will go to war over the occupation of the Sudetenland. It is two years after the events in March Violets and Bernie and his partner Bruno Stahlecker are working a blackmail case. Letters from the homosexual son of a wealthy publisher to his lover are being used to blackmail the mother who doesn't want to see her son wearing a pink triangle in a concentration camp.

The blackmail case goes very wrong and appears to be over. But simultaneously, the end of the case sees Bernie summoned to meet with Reinhard Heydrich whose jurisdiction includes the Kripo or criminal investigation division. Four young German girls —Aryan stereotypes , blond Rhine maidens—have been killed and horribly mutilated. The story has been press embargoed to prevent an anti-Jewish race riot. Race riots are bad for business. Bernie has considerable experience in criminal investigation —he caught Gorman the strangler — and has no racial or political axe so Heydrich wants Bernie back in the Kripo and in charge of the case and the case wrapped up with dispatch. It's an offer he can't refuse so Bernie agrees with the stipulations that he have the rank of Kriminalkommissar—so he can't be outranked— and that he be allowed to run the investigation his way.

Bernie assembles his team which includes a pathologist and a female psychotherapist. With this, the story moves into the police procedural phase with Bernie trying to find patterns, connections, and motives. Pieces come together and Bernie begins to see that the murders are more than the work of a madman and could have national implications. And could his blackmail case be related?

Kerr has picked a fascinating time and place to begin his Bernie Gunther series. For us, the readers, we know what is going to happen to Germany but Bernie is seeing events as they unfold and has a different perspective with what he knows. No fan of the Nazis, Bernie nonetheless seems to have a cordial relationship with Heydrich and his immediate boss, Author Nebe. We know that Heydrich was the main architect of the Holocaust who died from an assassination and Nebe will be executed for war crimes. But both indulge Bernie's cynicism about current events.
Heydrich: 'May I be frank with you? In confidence?'
Bernie: 'Be my guest.'
Heydrich: 'A maniac is loose on the streets of Berlin, Herr Gunther.'
Bernie: I shrugged. 'Not so as you would notice', I said.

The book is infused with the lead up to WWII and the Holocaust which Bernie observes but doesn't quite see the end result that we know is inevitable. When Jewish characters are introduced it's impossible not to think "Get out, get out while you can'. It is difficult not to see parallels with current events vilifying certain groups and generating hate and fear.

Bernie is as hardboiled as you can get in a detective story and Kerr doesn't try to make him appear noble. He does have a code which he expresses when he briefs his team for the first time:

I'd also like to say this. I don't care who did it. Jew, nigger, pansy, stormtrooper, Hitler Youth Leader, civil servant, motorway construction worker, it's all the same to me. Just as long as he did it.

Later, in a conversation with a conspirator:

The name is Gunther, and you can spare me the Party propagandaThese are the facts, Gunther, not propaganda. You're an anachronism, do you know that? You are out of your time.From the little history I know it seems to me that justice is never very fashionable, Kindermann. If I'm out of my time, if I'm out of step with the will of the people, as you describe it, them I'm glad. The difference between us is that whereas you wish to use their will, I want to see it curbed.

And he self-describes himself in Chandler-esque terms:

I'm no knight in shining armour. Just a weather-beaten man in a crumpled overcoat on a street corner with only a grey idea of something you might as well  go ahead and call Morality. Sure, I'm none too scrupulous about the things that might benefit my pocket, and I could no more inspire a bunch of young street thugs to do good works than I could stand up and sing a solo in the church choir. But of one thing I was sure. I was through looking at my fingernails when there were thieves in the store.

But Bernie has characteristics that make us see him as flawed some of which are not uncommon today: he is a homophobe;  his attitude toward women could be construed as a bit misogynistic —he pretty much evaluates women on their sexual attributes. But his behavior to discourage a sixteen year old girl from flirting with strange men is a seriously disturbing scene and one which would see him in prison and on the sex offender role today.

It isn't unusual in these period detective stories for the police to have a more casual attitude toward violence with suspects during an investigation. When one of his men shoots someone fleeing in the head Bernie wanted to interview, he seems more vexed than appalled and they carry on. And when things are not moving to his satisfaction, Bernie has no problem telling his man to work over a suspect with a rubber truncheon —just don't break any bones, yet.

But in the end Bernie Gunther is still one of the good guys, trying to do the right thing and not succumb the darkness enveloping Germany.

This is an excellent excellent detective story infused the atmosphere of Nazi Germany in the lead-up to WWII with very good police procedural investigating. Highly recommended.

Keywords: hardboiled, Nazis, detectives, antiemitism, crime fiction, police ptocedural