Congratulations to Philip Kerr for winning this years CWA Ellis Peters Historical Crime Award for his novel If The Dead Rise Not.
REVIEW
This sophisticated thriller is set in Berlin 1934, a city on the brink of cataclysmic change, Bernie Gunther is now a house detective at the famous Adlon Hotel having been forced to resign as a homicide detective. The discovery of two bodies - a Jewish boxer and a Jewish businessman - involves Bernie in the lives of two hotel guests. One is a beautiful journalist intent on persuading America to avoid the upcoming 1936 Olympics in Berlin and the other is a German-Jewish gangster who plans to use the Olympics as a way to make money for him and the Chicago mob. Bernie uncovers a vast labour and construction racket designed to take advantage of the huge amounts the Nazi's are willing to spend showcasing the new Germany to the world. The conclusion is found 20 years later in pre-revolution Cuba to where Bernie finds himself twenty years later. Kerr's skill is in the believable detail of both changing countries; Of war and it's aftermath and of a man who is changed and who also stays the same over twenty years. A brilliant novel that deserved the Ellis Peters award.
We've been very clever here at Goldsboro Books and have stocked all 6 of the wonderful novels on the shortlist. And we've been lucky too; they are all signed by the authors.
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