If there are two genres that have alternated the top sales positions in recent years or even decades, these correspond to the historical novel or the crime novel, in an alternation that leaves little room for other types of narrative proposals.
And if there is a recent author who knew how to reconcile a luck of the two genres that was the Scottish writer Philip kerr. His style is probably close to that of the great Ken follettOnly the latter has managed to rise to the top 5 in the world more consistently.
But the truth is that, for the good reader of these genres, Kerr had nothing to envy of Follett. The two Britons can actually form a tandem in which they go from one to the other as two complementary authors. Without a doubt, Kerr provided greater narrative tension that Follett compensates with that unmatched magnetic capacity through his characters and his scene breaks that always invite you to continue reading.
Kerr's predilection as a setting was interwar Europe, that sinister breeding ground full of nationalism and fear that was rapidly approaching the last great world conflict, World War II.
Literature also serves to bring the harshest reality of yesterday to the present. Fiction about conflictive, pre-war or war scenarios has that point between morbid and comforting for not living there, but it is also an exercise towards remembering the errors that marked the past.
Probably because of this, Kerr was always a rigorous author with the historical. And from that rigor with the facts, he launched into the adventure of his characters immersed in a thousand and one adverse circumstances.
Top 3 best Philip Kerr novels
If the dead do not rise
We all know the fearsome Nazi SS, in charge of killing and its Gestapo, ready to find new enemies of the cause. But the Kripo is not always so well known, the initial police of Nazism who served as the germ of everything that followed.
Bernie Gunther worked in this body, where he left before the outbreak of the war. The 36 Olympics are approaching, journalists from around the world come to Berlin, including Noreen, a reporter whose real purpose is to investigate anti-Semitism in the thriving new regime.
The love story that arises between the two will pose the necessary dilemma in the face of the risk that their lives run. Because they will come to touch a truth about the entire political assembly between Germany and the United States, but they will not be able to finish reaching that harsh reality.
Shortly after, both have to separate, but at the age of twenty they meet again in the middle of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba. Although it is clear that coincidences never happen alone, or simply because.
The hand of God
Quoting this novel in second place may be eccentric on my part. But it is what personal tastes have. The truth is that I love football, and I have even written a novel about it: Real Saragossa 2.0.
So when I heard that Kerr had signed up for detective literature from the green of a soccer field, I wanted to read the book. The truth is that it is a simple but captivating novel. And in the end it addresses issues of elite sport and even social aspects of great relevance.
Soccer as a mass sport can bring out the worst in all of us. And at the same time the level of demand, the strong economic interest can adulterate everything. When the protagonist of this novel, an elite soccer player, falls dead on the ground, the causes of his death point to many aspects that really shake our reality...
Berlin trilogy
Of course, I had to quote one of what many understand as the best work of this author. The Berlin trilogy guides us through the German capital in pre-war times, between the years 1936 and 1939. The main character is none other than the detective Bernie Gunther, who already appears freed from his connection with the Kripo in the first of my selected novels.
And yet in this trilogy we meet him in full action within that armed body in charge of preparing Hitler's path through investigations that were not always well documented and were interested in the rise to power of whoever led Europe to terror. .
The set of the trilogy covers everything, before, during and after the armed conflict, focusing on perfectly documented scenarios about the deepest recesses of Nazism as a social and political structure.
