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March Violets
Philip Kerr Book Review

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Plot Summary of March Violets
"Native Scot author Philip Kerr's debut novel in 1989 packs a wallop. The setting is Berlin in 1936, the third year of the Reich, and private eye (former cop) Bernie Gunther is getting a lot of missing person cases. Then a steel industrialist asks him to investigate the shooting and arson death of his beloved daughter and not so favorite son-in-law, a lawyer who turns out to have been a climber in the SS. The father wants Gunther to retrieve a diamond necklace worth three quarters of a million marks that disappeared from the couple's bedroom safe. Unfortunately, the Gestapo leans on our hero, he gets beat up a few times, more bodies turn up, and the trail eventually leads through Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich (Himmler's second in command) and into Dachau."
David Loftus, Resident Scholar



Review Analysis of March Violets
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot

Composition of Book
descript. of violence and chases - 20%
Planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 40%
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 20%
How society works & physical descript. (people, objects, places) - 20%




Tone of story - Dry-cynical
How difficult to spot villain? - Very difficult--no foreshadowing/clues
Time/era of story: - 1930's-1950's
What % of story relates directly to the mystery, not the subplot? - 70%
Misc. Murder Plotlets - character killed during/after sexing - "All in the family" murder
Kind of investigator - hard boiled/private eye
Kid or adult book? - Adult or Young Adult Book
Any non-mystery subplot? - minority/women/homosexual issues
Crime Thriller Yes
Murder Mystery (killer unknown) Yes

Main Character
Gender - Male
Profession/status: - private investigator
Age: - 20's-30's
How much violence does he/she use? - just the right amount
Ethnicity/Race - German
How sensitive is this character? - sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor - Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence - Smarter than most other characters
Physique - average physique

Main Adversary
Identity: - an organization
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in: - a moderate amount
Motive of antagonist - power
The antagonists are: - nazis

Setting
Europe Yes
European country: - Germany
City? Yes
City: - dangerous
Misc setting - prison

Style
Part of a series? Yes
Person - mostly 1st
Accounts of torture and death? - very gorey references to deaths/dead bodies and torture
How many deaths? - 5-7
Sex Yes
What kind of sex: - descript of kissing - actual description of sex - descript. of breasts - rape (yeech!)
Unusual forms of death - perforation--bullets - blunt clubbing (like seals)
Unusual form of death? Yes
Amount of dialog - roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
Most similar books to March Violets
The Pale Criminal by Philip Kerr
White Butterfly by Walter Mosley
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A Well-Respected Dead Man by Tricia Allen
Beaulah Hill by William Heffernan


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