Door de sprong in de tijd mist het verhaal wat aan spankracht, maar dat wordt goedgemaakt door een verrassende (tweede) plot. Toch altijd leuk lezen, die Kerr.
Volledige bespreking via http://wraakvandedodo.blogspot.com/20... ( )

Set in Berlin in 1934,in a Germany preparing to host the Olympic Games in 1936. An American Olympic committee is in Berlin supposedly assessing whether there should be a US boycott of the Games because of racial practices in Nazi Germany. Hitler's determination to show Aryan supremacy is already having effect - Jews are being excluded from public office, sporting clubs, and even those who seem most German are having to take steps to hide their Jewish bloodlines.
Because Germany is prepared to spend vast sums on the construction of the venues for the Games, it is also a golden opportunity for overseas entrepreneurs to make money.
Ex-homicide detective with the Berlin Criminal Police, Bernie Gunther, works at the Adlon Hotel as a house detective. The discovery of the body of a German businessman connected with the construction industry sparks an investigative trail for Bernie, and the final resolution will not happen for another twenty years, nor will it take place in Berlin.

The main story reminded me of THE IRON HEART by Australian author Marshall Browne which I read earlier this year. Admittedly THE IRON HEART is set in Berlin 5 years later, but the danger of being Jewish in Nazi Germany is well described there too.

If I have a bone to pick with IF THE DEAD RISE NOT it is with Philip Kerr's decision to set the tying up of the threads in Cuba twenty years later. IF THE DEAD RISE NOT is the sixth in the Bernie Gunther series but I haven't read any others. The series has been published over a period of twenty years. From my research I believe the first, MARCH VIOLETS, was set in Berlin in 1936. It seems to me that what Kerr has done is weave threads in Bernie Gunther's life from the early 1930s to the mid 1950s through each of the books. (Perhaps someone reading this post will tell me how correct I am).

For me, the technique didn't quite work. When we got to Cuba, I just wanted it all to finish, to finally see how he would round it off. I was much happier back in Germany in 1934. As I read the latter part of the book I became aware of things I might have missed out on by not reading other books in the series. There were allusions and quickly told snippets of Bernie's history, which I thought were there to fill me in on the "back story". ( )

World-weary, wise-cracking Bernie Gunther is a man so hard-boiled he makes his rivals look gently poached. Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe had it easy. Sure, they had to contend with corrupt cops and shifty dames with an eye for the main chance but, unlike Gunther, they didn't have the Nazis to worry about.
Forced to resign as a homicide detective with Berlin's Criminal Police for refusing to demonstrate support for the Nazis, Bernie is now house detective at the famous Adlon Hotel. It is 1934 and Berlin is preparing for the Olympics, while across Germany, civil liberties are being crushed, freedom by freedom, although few people can have any idea of the horrors to come. Even Gunther, no slouch when it comes to abject cynicism, can barely believe the incremental brutalities that Berlin's Jews are facing.
The discovery of two bodies - one a businessman and the other a Jewish boxer - involves Bernie in the lives of two hotel guests. One is a beautiful left-wing journalist intent on persuading America to boycott the Berlin Olympiad; the other is a German-Jewish gangster who plans to use the Olympics to enrich himself and the Chicago mob. As events unfold, Bernie uncovers a vast labour and construction racket designed to take advantage of the huge sums the Nazis are prepared to spend to showcase the new Germany to the world.
The story comes full circle in 1950s Cuba where the main protagonists meet again in Batista's Havana, just after Castro is jailed for a failed attack on a barracks. Gunther meets the journalist and the gangster again and also bumps into the mobsters running the lucrative casino business. He is asked to investigate another murder, at the request of the Mob and things are not as straight forward as anyone thinks.
If the Dead Rise Not is the sixth book in Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir series. I’ll look forward to reading the others. ( )

Kerr's "Bernie Gunther" books are one of the few books that I am willing to pay full price for. I literally can't wait for the cheaper paperback versions and I am really impatient to start reading them. So I was extremely disappointed when I gradually found out that this book "If The Dead Rise Not" is actually not that great. Compared to the others in the series, this one is REALLY weak and I was actually quite bored throughout many parts of it.

The book is split into two parts - Berlin in 1934 and Cuba in 1954. This is one of the things that really pissed me off. How Kerr suddenly jumped 20 years forward to Cuba of all places. One minute you're in Nazi Berlin in 1934 and just when you are finally feeling that you are starting to get into the story, the story abruptly stops and you are now in 1954 Cuba. I hate you for this Kerr!

But even the Berlin part could have been rewritten a bit to sound a bit more interesting. The main thrust of the plot is that Gunther is now a hotel detective at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin (after being compelled to leave the Berlin police). He is asked to help an Adlon guest, a female American journalist, who wants to find evidence that the Jews are being discriminated against so the US Government will have to boycott the coming Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. Cue lots of driving around Berlin getting into all kinds of scrapes, verbal tussles and more. Oh and of course, Gunther and the journalist fall for one another so that gives Kerr the opportunity to fit in a few sex scenes here and there. Predictable or what?

The other part which got on my nerves a bit was that the whole book was a huge lecture on why the Nazis were bad. Gunther goes to see a "big fat loathsome Nazi" and what not. We all know the Nazis were bad people but Kerr lays it on really thick like margarine on bread. I want a good story, not a historical moral lecture!

Oh and here's the icing on the cake - part of the story is set in Würzburg where I live - and Kerr says that it is a terrible place which you should leave as soon as possible!!! Thanks a bunch Phil. I'll remember that one. ( )