Book Summary and Reviews of The One from the Other by Philip Kerr

The One from the Other by Philip Kerr

The One from the Other

by Philip Kerr

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  • Sep 2006, 384 pages
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Book Summary

Germany, 1949: Amid the chaos of defeat, it's a place of dirty deals, rampant greed, fleeing Nazis, and all the intrigue and deceit readers have come to expect from this immensely talented thriller writer. In The One from the Other, Hitler's legacy lives on. For Bernie Gunther, Berlin has become too dangerous, and he now works as a private detective in Munich. Business is slow and his funds are dwindling when a woman hires him to investigate her husband's disappearance. No, she doesn't want him back - he's a war criminal. She merely wants confirmation that he is dead. It's a simple job, but in postwar Germany, nothing is simple - nothing is what it appears to be. Accepting the case, Bernie takes on far more than he'd bargained for, and before long, he is on the run, facing enemies from every side.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Grim and gripping, with all the author's customary sure-handedness in evidence." - Kirkus Reviews.

"[I]n terms of narrative, dialogue, plot, pace and characterizations, he's in a league with John le Carre and Alan Furst." - The Washington Post.

"Starred Review. Perfectly plotted, the book builds to a satisfying conclusion." - Publishers Weekly.

"As with his earlier Gunther books, Kerr follows Raymond Chandler's playbook closely, adapting his trademark metaphors with all the subtlety of a goose-step and the restraint of Hermann Goring at a knackwurst-eating contest, to say nothing of the relish." - Booklist.

"Starred Review. Although Kerr sometimes overdoes his descriptions of characters ... his dazzling touch will sweep readers away. A profound sense of moral introspection underlies the whole." - Library Journal.

This information about The One from the Other was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Philip Kerr Author Biography

Philip Kerr was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and studied at the University of Birmingham. Following university he worked as a copywriter at a number of advertising agencies, during which time he wrote no advertising slogans of any note. He spent most of his time in advertising researching an idea he had for a novel.

His first book in the Bernie Gunther series, March Violets, was published in 1989. He has written for the Sunday Times, Evening Standard and the New Statesman. In addition to at least eleven books for adults including the Bernie Gunther series, he was also the author of the Children of the Lamp series written under the name P.B. Kerr.

He died of cancer in March 2018 aged 62 a few weeks ahead of the publication of Greeks Bearing Gifts (April 2018), and having completed a ...

... Full Biography
Link to Philip Kerr's Website

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