Recommended novel series

[Colin_Fraser]

I thought I would tip you guys to a great series of detective/historical fiction I have been reading for many years. Coincidentally, my kids gave me Philip Kerr's most recent novel "A Man Without Breath" for my birthday this month.



If you like a good mystery set in WWII, try his series of books about hard nosed police detective Bernie Guenther. The original trilogy was called "Berlin Noir" for obvious reasons - it was accurately set in Berlin pre, during and post war. In all his books, Kerr does a masterful job of weaving Bernie's adventures into real events and real characters in WWII.

His most recent work is set at Army Group Centre in central Russia in '43 and has a complex murder interwoven with the actal investigation into the Katyn massacre, Tresckow's Operation Flash assassination attempt where a bomb was actually smuggled onto Hitler's plane (you may have seen this in the film Valkyrie), Gersdorff's suicide bomb attempt on Heroes Memorial Day a few days later and preparations for the Kursk offensive. He also brings in the Rosenstrasse protest. We get to see Bernie interacting with GFM von Kluge, Tresckow, Gersdorff, Dohnanyi, Canaris and many other lesser historical characters.

A great read! And just the thing to keep me motivated as I sculpt my portrait of Canaris.

Rumour has it that Bernie Gunther will be on the small screen soon, thanks to Tom Hanks and HO.

Here are the books in order: http://berniegunther.com/thebooks/

Colin

 

[Mirofsoft]

What work well for me lately is the "Century" trilogy by K Follet, at least part 1 and 2 , waiting for part 3

 

[billyturnip]

Thanks for that Colin, I'm always on the lookout for books to take back to sea.
Recently I've been reading the Liebermann Papers series of books by Frank Tallis. This is the description from Amazon of the first book Mortal Mischief.

It is Vienna at the beginning of the last century, and Dr Max Liebermann is a young psychoanalyst - and disciple of Freud. Psychoanalysis is only just developing and viewed with a mixture of excitement and suspicion. The world of 1900s Vienna is one where philosophy, science and art are at their most exciting and flourishing, with the coffee shops full of men and women debating the latest cultural and political theories.

Liebermann's good friend Oskar Rheinhardt is a Detective Inspector - hard working, but lacking Liebermann's insights and forensic eye and so it is through Rheinhardt that Libermann is called upon to help with police investigations surrounding the death of a beautiful young medium, in what seems at first to be supernatural circumstances. While Liebermann attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery, he also must decide whether he is to follow his father's advice and marry the beautiful but reserved Clara.

Roger.

 

[polyphemus]

There's a series of privately published novels set in the Peninsular War;

http://www.bicorn.co.uk/


Geoff