Philip Kerr

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Template:Short description Script error: No such module "about". Template:EngvarB Template:Use dmy dates Script error: No such module "Infobox".Template:Template otherScript error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Template:Main other Template:^ Philip Ballantyne Kerr (22 February 1956 – 23 March 2018) was a British author,[1][2][3] best known for his Bernie Gunther series of historical detective thrillers.

Early life

Kerr was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, where his father was an engineer and his mother worked as a secretary.[4] 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.[5] Kerr worked as an advertising copywriter for Saatchi & Saatchi[5] 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.[5]

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,[6] and had three children. Just before he died, he finished a 14th Bernie Gunther novel, Metropolis, which was published posthumously, in 2019.[7]

Awards and honours

In 1993, Kerr was named in Granta's list of Best Young British Novelists.[5] 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.[8] The book also won the British Crime Writers' Association's Ellis Peters Historic Crime Award that same year.[9] 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.[10]

Publications

Novels

Bernie Gunther

Scott Manson novels

Stand alone novels

Non fiction

  • The Penguin Book of Lies. 1991;1996
  • The Penguin Book of Fights, Feuds and Heartfelt Hatreds: An Anthology of Antipathy. 1992;1993

Children's fiction (as P. B. Kerr)

Children of the Lamp

Stand alone fiction

  • One Small Step. London: Simon & Schuster, 2008 (paper). Template:ISBN
  • The Most Frightening Story Ever Told. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. Template:ISBN
  • Friedrich der Große Detektiv (Frederick the Great Detective).[16] Rowohlt Verlag, 2017. Template:ISBN

Notes

Template:Reflist

External links

Template:RBA Prize for Crime Writing Template:Authority control

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  11. ↑ The text on the dust jacket of UK hardback editions of Field Grey, as well as many listings at online retailers, contain an incorrect early plot summary referencing many elements – including the Isle of Pines as a location and Fidel Castro and a French intelligence officer named Thibaud as characters – that do not appear in the final book.
  12. ↑ Prague Fatale was originally announced under the title The Man with the Iron Heart. The name had to be changed shortly before publication, when the publishers discovered there was already a novel with the same title, also about Reinhard Heydrich, by author Harry Turtledove.
  13. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  14. ↑ Dead Meat was adapted for British television as Grushko, and a media tie-in edition was later published with that title.
  15. ↑ As of 2023, published only in German and Turkish translations.
  16. ↑ As of 2023, published only in a German translation.
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