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A review by jakewritesbooks
A Man Without Breath by Philip Kerr
4.0
RIP Philip Kerr.
A few years ago, my wife and I returned from our honeymoon in Berlin and I discovered the Berlin Noir trilogy. I binged on it and all of Kerr's Bernard Gunther books up to that point, enjoying them at first but eventually getting burnt out of the repetitious coincidences and damsels in distress. The last one I read, Prague Fatale, was probably his best up to that point because it was self-contained instead of spanning decades. Nevertheless, I got a job and discovered other writers and put Kerr's work to the side for a bit.
Then when I heard about Kerr's unexpected death last week, I remembered that I had this book on iBooks and decided to pour into it. It was like meeting up with a long lost friend.
The extended break I took from Kerr's work was good because I found returning to it refreshing. Kerr has a great sense of history and walks a delicate line of ambiguity with his main character. After all, it is impossible to write about a participant in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht as a good guy and Kerr knows better. Gunther is still presented as a man who has to make difficult decisions to try and do what can be considered the right thing. He doesn't always do it but it's the way he labors that makes these books compelling.
There are still some obnoxious tics. Kerr has never been great at writing women and this one here, existing solely as a love interest for Gunther and nothing more, is weak even by his standards. There's also a bit of a deus ex machina ending of which I was not a big fan of.
But on the whole, I was deeply immersed in this and I'm glad to have rediscovered the series. I look forward to checking out the rest of it, as there is sadly a finite number on how many Gunther books are left.
A few years ago, my wife and I returned from our honeymoon in Berlin and I discovered the Berlin Noir trilogy. I binged on it and all of Kerr's Bernard Gunther books up to that point, enjoying them at first but eventually getting burnt out of the repetitious coincidences and damsels in distress. The last one I read, Prague Fatale, was probably his best up to that point because it was self-contained instead of spanning decades. Nevertheless, I got a job and discovered other writers and put Kerr's work to the side for a bit.
Then when I heard about Kerr's unexpected death last week, I remembered that I had this book on iBooks and decided to pour into it. It was like meeting up with a long lost friend.
The extended break I took from Kerr's work was good because I found returning to it refreshing. Kerr has a great sense of history and walks a delicate line of ambiguity with his main character. After all, it is impossible to write about a participant in Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht as a good guy and Kerr knows better. Gunther is still presented as a man who has to make difficult decisions to try and do what can be considered the right thing. He doesn't always do it but it's the way he labors that makes these books compelling.
There are still some obnoxious tics. Kerr has never been great at writing women and this one here, existing solely as a love interest for Gunther and nothing more, is weak even by his standards. There's also a bit of a deus ex machina ending of which I was not a big fan of.
But on the whole, I was deeply immersed in this and I'm glad to have rediscovered the series. I look forward to checking out the rest of it, as there is sadly a finite number on how many Gunther books are left.