It reminds me of the atmosphere of The central character is Bernhard Gunther (Bernie to his friends), a former detective who quit Here’s a taste of “March Violets,” the first in the trilogy: <\/P> “That’s right,” I said, “and you must be –” I pretended to read his business card, “– Dr Fritz <\/P> Speaking of favorite novels, I was reminded of another by I don’t know about “ingesting” it — how about “absorbing” it — and I don’t appreciate We’re good little Nazis now: “Republican students at the University of Colorado launched a Web site to gather complaints about left-leaning faculty members, saying they want to document discrimination against conservative students and indoctrination to the liberal viewpoint.” This is scary stuff. It reminds me of the atmosphere of “Berlin Noir,” Philip Kerr’s trilogy of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-8s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nstudents at the University of Colorado launched a Web site to gather complaints about left-leaning
\nfaculty members, saying they want to document discrimination against conservative students and
\nindoctrination to the liberal viewpoint.” This is scary stuff. <\/P>
\n
\nNoir,”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> Philip Kerr’s trilogy of detective novels, which take place
\nduring the Third Reich just before World War II. They’ve been my great reading pleasure these
\ndays. <\/P>
\n
\nthe force before he “got weeded out” by the Nazi party. Now he’s a private eye. What is
\nparticularly good about “Berlin Noir” is that it gives an authentic picture of life under Hitler and
\nhis minions. It’s full of small details rarely found in history books except as abstractions. And it
\nexplodes the widespread myth of German efficiency and brilliance, replacing it with the reality of
\ncorruption and stupidity.<\/P>
\n
\n“You’re Gunther, the detective?”
\n
\nSchemm, German lawyer.” I uttered the word “German” with a deliberately sarcastic emphasis.
\nI’ve always hated it on business cards and signs because of the implication of racial respectability;
\nand even more so now that — at least as far as lawyers are concerned — it is quite redundant, since
\nJews are forbidden to practice law anyway. I would no more describe myself as a “German
\nPrivate Investigator’ than I would call myself a “Lutheran Private Investigator” or an “Antisocial
\nPrivate Investigator” or a “Widowed Private Investigator,” even though I am, or was at one time,
\nall of these things (these days I am not often seen in church). It’s true that a lot of my clients are
\nJews. Their business is very profitable (they pay on the nail), and it’s always the same — Missing
\nPersons. The results are pretty much the same too: a body dumped in the Landwehr Canal
\ncourtesy of the Gestapo or the SA; a lonely suicide in a rowboat on the Wansee; or a name on a
\npolice list of convicts sent to a KZ, a Concentration Camp. So right away I didn’t like this lawyer,
\nthis German lawyer.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\n
\nJournal the other day: “It’s not possible to spend an hour in urban India without ingesting life’s
\nunfairness. … Luck and grueling effort are the main safety nets in places like India, and poor
\nchildren aren’t spared the legion of woes that their parents face daily.” <\/P>
\n
\nVaradarajan’s smugness in the telling of it, but he makes me relish all the more Clive James’s
\nSilver Castle,”<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> which traces an urchin’s life from the Bombay slums to
\nBollywood, and which I highly recommend (a helluva lot more than Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s
\nChildren”).<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"