Philip Kerr


Philip Ballantyne Kerr was a Scottish author, best known for his Bernie Gunther series of historical detective thrillers.

Early life

Kerr was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, where his father was an engineer and his mother worked as a secretary. He was educated at a grammar school in Northampton. He studied at the University of Birmingham from 1974 to 1980, gaining a master's degree in law and philosophy. Kerr worked as an advertising copywriter for Saatchi & Saatchi before becoming a full-time writer in 1989. In a 2012 interview, Kerr noted that he began his literary career at the age of twelve by writing pornographic stories and lending them to classmates for a fee.

Career

A writer of both adult fiction and non-fiction, he is known for the Bernhard "Bernie" Gunther series of 14 historical thrillers set in Germany and elsewhere during the 1930s, the Second World War and the Cold War. He also wrote children's books under the name P. B. Kerr, including the Children of the Lamp series. Kerr wrote for The Sunday Times, the Evening Standard, and the New Statesman. He was married to fellow novelist Jane Thynne; they lived in Wimbledon, London, and had three children. Just before he died, he finished a 14th Bernie Gunther novel, Metropolis, which was published posthumously, in 2019.

Awards and honours

In 1993, Kerr was named in Granta's list of Best Young British Novelists. In 2009, If the Dead Rise Not won the world's most lucrative crime fiction award, the RBA Prize for Crime Writing worth €125,000. The book also won the British Crime Writers' Association's Ellis Peters Historic Crime Award that same year. His novel, Prussian Blue, was longlisted for the 2018 Walter Scott Prize.

Death

Kerr died at age 62 from bladder cancer on 23 March 2018.

Publications

Novels

Bernie Gunther series

  • "Berlin Noir" "Bernie Gunther" trilogy, republished 1993 by Penguin Books in one volume..
  • *March Violets. London: Viking, 1989., set in 1936
  • *The Pale Criminal. London: Viking, 1990., set in 1938
  • *A German Requiem. London: Viking, 1991., set in 1947–48
  • Later "Bernie Gunther" novels
  • *The One from the Other. New York: Putnam, 2006., set in 1949
  • *A Quiet Flame. London: Quercus, 2008., set in 1950 and 1932-33
  • *If the Dead Rise Not. London: Quercus, 2009., set in 1934 and 1954
  • *Field Grey. London: Quercus, 2010., set in 1954 with flashbacks from 1941, 1931, 1940, & 1945/46.
  • *Prague Fatale. London: Quercus, 2011, set in 1941
  • *A Man Without Breath. London: Quercus, 2013., set in 1943
  • *The Lady from Zagreb. London: Quercus, 2015., set in 1942–3, with framing scenes in 1956.
  • *The Other Side of Silence. London: Quercus, 2016., set in 1956
  • *Prussian Blue. London: Quercus, 2017., set in 1939, with framing scenes in 1956
  • *Greeks Bearing Gifts. London: Quercus, 2018., set in 1957
  • *Metropolis. London: Quercus, 2019., set in 1928

    Scott Manson novels

  • January Window. London: Head of Zeus, 23 October 2014.
  • Hand of God. London: Head of Zeus, 4 June 2015.
  • False Nine. London: Head of Zeus, 5 November 2015.

    Stand alone novels

  • A Philosophical Investigation. London: Chatto & Windus, 1992.
  • Dead Meat. London: Chatto & Windus, 1993.
  • Gridiron. London: Chatto & Windus, 1995.
  • Esau. London: Chatto & Windus, 1996.
  • A Five Year Plan. London: Hutchinson, 1997.
  • The Second Angel. London: Orion, 1998.
  • The Shot. London: Orion, 1999.
  • Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton. New York: Crown, 2002.
  • Hitler's Peace. New York: Marian Wood, 2005.
  • Prayer. London: Quercus, 2013.
  • The Winter Horses. New York: Knopf, 2014.
  • Research. London: Quercus, 2014.
  • 1984.4. Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 2021.

    Non fiction

  • The Penguin Book of Lies. 1991;1996
  • The Penguin Book of Fights, Feuds and Heartfelt Hatreds: An Anthology of Antipathy. 1992;1993

    Children's fiction (as P. B. Kerr)

''[Children of the Lamp]''

  • The Akhenaten Adventure. London: Scholastic Press, 2004.
  • The Blue Djinn of Babylon. London: Scholastic Press, 2005.
  • The Cobra King of Kathmandu. London: Scholastic Press, 2006.
  • The Day of the Djinn Warriors. London: Scholastic Press, 2007.
  • The Eye of the Forest. London: Scholastic Press, 2009.
  • The Five Fakirs of Faizabad. London: Scholastic Press, 2010.
  • The Grave Robbers of Genghis Khan. London: Scholastic Press, 2011.

    Stand alone fiction

  • One Small Step. London: Simon & Schuster, 2008.
  • The Most Frightening Story Ever Told. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.
  • Friedrich der Große Detektiv . Rowohlt Verlag, 2017.