Philip Kerr was a Scottish author of historical crime fiction, thrillers and children’s fantasy. Born in Edinburgh in 1956, he studied law and philosophy at the University of Birmingham, developing a particular interest in twentieth-century German history. After working in advertising, he published March Violets in 1989, introducing Bernie Gunther, a former Berlin police detective attempting to retain his integrity amid the corruption and violence of Nazi Germany. Kerr died in 2018.
The Bernie Gunther sequence began with the three novels later collected as Berlin Noir and eventually comprised fourteen books spanning Weimar Berlin, the Nazi dictatorship, the Second World War and the early Cold War. The series combines hard-boiled detection with political history, following Gunther through criminal investigations, intelligence operations and encounters with historical figures. Kerr also wrote standalone thrillers and, under the name P. B. Kerr, the Children of the Lamp fantasy series. His work received several crime-writing honours, including Shamus Awards and the Crime Writers’ Association Ellis Peters Award for Historical Crime Fiction.
