METROPOLIS Philip Kerr. Review

Tom Wells

Berlin, 1927. The Weimar Republic is in the middle of its so-called Golden Era, though you’d never know it if you walked a kilometer in Detective Bernie Gunther’s shoes. Purges of Jews, Communists and other undesirables would not begin for another six years, but someone is already beta-testing the Nazi social contract by targeting prostitutes and homeless WWI veterans, deemed embarrassing reminders of Germany’s defeat and decline since 1918.  New to the police department’s murder squad, Gunther can suffer the slings and arrows of standard procedure only so long before he hits on the idea of going undercover as a homeless veteran himself.  Along the way, he enters the seedy world of Cabaret and rubs elbows with the brightest artistic lights of the day, including Fritz Lang (director of the 1927 film classic that gives the book its name), his collaborator/wife Thea Von Harbou and the artists George Grosz and Otto Dix (who actually did paint homeless, disfigured veterans on Berlin’s straßes).  

Although it’s been awhile since I’ve read the first three of the eight Bernie Gunther books, my memories of them are fonder than those of Metropolis.  In the early books, the interweaving of historic figures with fictional narrative seemed seamless. Metropolis , on the other hand, reads as two books: a bog-standard police procedural; and a non-fiction description of a year in the life of the Weimar Republic. With the notable exceptions of Bernie’s day-to-day meetings with Bernhard Weiss, Berlin’s real-life Chief of Police, and Ernst Gennat, a legendary homicide detective, the intersection of fiction and historic figures/events too often feels forced.  Descriptions of real people and places read like encyclopedia entries, while the 21-page (in Kindle) summing up of events by the gangster Erich Angerstein is more newspaper account than storytelling. 

That is not to say that Metropolis is not a good read.  There are more than a few passages that give Raymond Chandler a run for his money. “My brain felt like a half lemon in a bartender’s fist.” “A naval- style black cap with a shiny peak that probably resembled his soul.” “One of his ears reminded me of an unborn fetus.” It’s just a shame there wasn’t more Chandler and less Wikipedia.  

Three stars