Philip Ballantyne Kerr (22 February 1956 – 23 March 2018) was a Scottish author, best known for his Bernie Gunther series of historical detective thrillers.
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Early life
Kerr was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, where his father was an engineer and his mother worked as a secretary. He was educated at a grammar school in Northampton. He studied at the University of Birmingham from 1974 to 1980, gaining a master's degree in law and philosophy. Kerr worked as an advertising copywriter for Saatchi & Saatchi before becoming a full-time writer in 1989. In a 2012 interview, Kerr noted that he began his literary career at the age of twelve by writing pornographic stories and lending them to classmates for a fee.
Career
A writer of both adult fiction and non-fiction, he is known for the Bernhard "Bernie" Gunther series of 14 historical thrillers set in Germany and elsewhere during the 1930s, the Second World War and the Cold War. He also wrote children's books under the name P. B. Kerr, including the Children of the Lamp series. Kerr wrote for The Sunday Times, the Evening Standard, and the New Statesman. He was married to fellow novelist Jane Thynne; they lived in Wimbledon, London, and had three children. While fighting cancer, he completed the fourteenth Bernie Gunther novel, Metropolis, which was published after his death, in 2019.
Awards and honours
In 1993, Kerr was named in Granta's list of Best Young British Novelists. In 2009, If the Dead Rise Not won the world's most lucrative crime fiction award, the RBA Prize for Crime Writing worth €125,000. The book also won the British Crime Writers' Association's Ellis Peters Historic Crime Award that same year. His novel, Prussian Blue, was longlisted for the 2018 Walter Scott Prize.
Death
Kerr died at age 62 from bladder cancer on 23 March 2018.
Publications
Novels
"Berlin Noir" trilogy, republished 1993 by Penguin Books in one volume. ISBN 978-0-14-023170-0.
March Violets. London: Viking, 1989. ISBN 0-670-82431-3, set in 1936
The Pale Criminal. London: Viking, 1990. ISBN 0-670-82433-X, set in 1938
A German Requiem. London: Viking, 1991. ISBN 0-670-83516-1, set in 1947–48
Later "Bernie Gunther" novels
The One from the Other. New York: Putnam, 2006. ISBN 978-0-399-15299-3, set in 1949 (intro set in 1937)
A Quiet Flame. London: Quercus, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84724-356-0, set in 1950 and 1932–33
If the Dead Rise Not. London: Quercus, 2009. ISBN 978-1-84724-942-5, set in 1934 and 1954
Field Grey. (Field Gray in USA) London: Quercus, 2010. ISBN 978-1-84916-412-2, set in 1954 with flashbacks from 1941, 1931, 1940, & 1945/46.
Prague Fatale. London: Quercus, 2011 ISBN 978-1-84916-415-3, set in 1941
A Man Without Breath. London: Quercus, 2013. ISBN 978-1-78087-624-5, set in 1943
The Lady from Zagreb. London: Quercus, 2015. ISBN 978-1-78206-582-1, set in 1942–3, with framing scenes in 1956.
The Other Side of Silence. London: Quercus, 2016. ISBN 978-1-78429-514-1, set in 1956
Prussian Blue. London: Quercus, 2017. ISBN 978-1-78429-648-3, set in 1939, with framing scenes in 1956
Children's fiction (as P. B. Kerr)
The Akhenaten Adventure. London: Scholastic Press, 2004. ISBN 0-439-96365-6
The Blue Djinn of Babylon. London: Scholastic Press, 2005. ISBN 0-439-95950-0
The Cobra King of Kathmandu. London: Scholastic Press, 2006. ISBN 0-439-95958-6
The Day of the Djinn Warriors. London: Scholastic Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1-4071-0365-5
The Eye of the Forest. London: Scholastic Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-439-93215-8
The Five Fakirs of Faizabad. London: Scholastic Press, 2010.
The Grave Robbers of Genghis Khan. London: Scholastic Press, 2011.
One Small Step. London: Simon & Schuster, 2008 (paper). ISBN 978-1-84738-300-6
The Most Frightening Story Ever Told. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. ISBN 978-0-553-52209-9
Friedrich der Große Detektiv (Frederick the Great Detective). Rowohlt Verlag, 2017. ISBN 978-3-499-21791-3