Phillip Kerr - The One From The Other
May. 21st, 2020 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
satalasers Guess who finally read a book! Me!!!!
Slight problem though: this book is a standalone, set after a trilogy, mind. A trilogy which I have not read. Which kind of irks me because what if there was something important I missed? Would there have been characters that meant more to me had I read the trilogy first?
I mean, it was easy to follow and understand the story, but it's a minor complaint, and part of the reason why I was kind of reluctant to read it in the first place, but I wanted to read something, and it's not a bad read.
- I am... not sure how to feel about the main character? He says he worked for the SS, but he's not a Nazi? His main profession seems to be, he was a policeman, then became a detective, and somewhere along the way, got dragged into working for the SS? He was kind of... apathetic as a character, so as a result, I kind of felt apathetic to him.
- To be fair, though, if it's a noir, I'm always feeling apathetic to the main character. (Unless it's Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but that feels like a very special movie that's delightful and weird.) I mean, I did like The Thin Man, as well, so I think I'm kind of charmed by duos in noirs, rather than just, the lone detective.
- Noirs are weird. I'm always invested the mystery that the main character gets dragged into, but boy, it's hard to care about the main character at times. (Hence why being a duo helps, I think. Because at least I get that they care for someone.)
- And this was a great mystery! I very much enjoyed the feeling of 'something's not right', but being unable to pinpoint what exactly. Lies, deception, double-crossing. Murder! I definitely felt tense at times because it was unsettling to realize that something that seemed innocuous at the start, very much became less so with the reveals of how much was thought beforehand.
- I totally understood the spite the main char\acter had for the antagonist. That revenge felt deserved, and then it was chilling to read afterwards that that person was a real person that existed.
- This book talked about the Spanish Flu of 1918 at the start, when the protag thinks that his wife is suffering from, (before it is revealed later that nope, she got murdered), which now that we have Corvid-19, I felt that maybe I should have read this book a little earlier.
- The book takes place post World War 2, and despite having mixed feelings about it, I do think it's interesting to see how the world... moves on from the monstrosities that occurred. How people relate to each other, have sympathy, or don't. How they take revenge, or just... try to get past it, despite the terrible things they've done. IDK, the microcosms were interesting, and it's not quite clear cut.
- Lingo was a little bit tough to understand at times. I guess it makes sense to call a Russian 'Ivan', but an American as 'Ami' was a little harder to figure out?
- I definitely could tell that the author researched a lot, but I still can't believe how many novels he wrote for this character, Bernie Gunther.
Not sure I'd go back to this series, but it was a good book, nonetheless.
Slight problem though: this book is a standalone, set after a trilogy, mind. A trilogy which I have not read. Which kind of irks me because what if there was something important I missed? Would there have been characters that meant more to me had I read the trilogy first?
I mean, it was easy to follow and understand the story, but it's a minor complaint, and part of the reason why I was kind of reluctant to read it in the first place, but I wanted to read something, and it's not a bad read.
- I am... not sure how to feel about the main character? He says he worked for the SS, but he's not a Nazi? His main profession seems to be, he was a policeman, then became a detective, and somewhere along the way, got dragged into working for the SS? He was kind of... apathetic as a character, so as a result, I kind of felt apathetic to him.
- To be fair, though, if it's a noir, I'm always feeling apathetic to the main character. (Unless it's Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but that feels like a very special movie that's delightful and weird.) I mean, I did like The Thin Man, as well, so I think I'm kind of charmed by duos in noirs, rather than just, the lone detective.
- Noirs are weird. I'm always invested the mystery that the main character gets dragged into, but boy, it's hard to care about the main character at times. (Hence why being a duo helps, I think. Because at least I get that they care for someone.)
- And this was a great mystery! I very much enjoyed the feeling of 'something's not right', but being unable to pinpoint what exactly. Lies, deception, double-crossing. Murder! I definitely felt tense at times because it was unsettling to realize that something that seemed innocuous at the start, very much became less so with the reveals of how much was thought beforehand.
- I totally understood the spite the main char\acter had for the antagonist. That revenge felt deserved, and then it was chilling to read afterwards that that person was a real person that existed.
- This book talked about the Spanish Flu of 1918 at the start, when the protag thinks that his wife is suffering from, (before it is revealed later that nope, she got murdered), which now that we have Corvid-19, I felt that maybe I should have read this book a little earlier.
- The book takes place post World War 2, and despite having mixed feelings about it, I do think it's interesting to see how the world... moves on from the monstrosities that occurred. How people relate to each other, have sympathy, or don't. How they take revenge, or just... try to get past it, despite the terrible things they've done. IDK, the microcosms were interesting, and it's not quite clear cut.
- Lingo was a little bit tough to understand at times. I guess it makes sense to call a Russian 'Ivan', but an American as 'Ami' was a little harder to figure out?
- I definitely could tell that the author researched a lot, but I still can't believe how many novels he wrote for this character, Bernie Gunther.
Not sure I'd go back to this series, but it was a good book, nonetheless.
