Philip Kerr Books In Order

Bernie Gunther Books In Publication Order

  1. March Violets (1989)
  2. The Pale Criminal (1990)
  3. A German Requiem (1991)
  4. The One from the Other (2006)
  5. A Quiet Flame (2008)
  6. Field Gray (2010)
  7. If The Dead Rise Not (2010)
  8. Prague Fatale (2011)
  9. A Man Without Breath (2013)
  10. The Lady from Zagreb (2015)
  11. The Other Side of Silence (2016)
  12. Prussian Blue (2017)
  13. Greeks Bearing Gifts (2018)
  14. Metropolis (2019)

Children Of The Lamp Books In Publication Order

  1. The Akhenaten Adventure (2004)
  2. The Blue Djinn of Babylon (2005)
  3. The Cobra King of Kathmandu (2006)
  4. The Day of the Djinn Warriors (2007)
  5. The Eye of the Forest (2008)
  6. The Five Fakirs of Faizabad (2010)
  7. The Grave Robbers of Genghis Khan (2011)

Scott Manson Books In Publication Order

  1. January Window (2014)
  2. Hand of God (2015)
  3. False Nine (2015)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. A Philosophical Investigation (1992)
  2. Dead Meat (1993)
  3. Gridiron / The Grid (1995)
  4. Esau (1996)
  5. A Five-Year Plan (1998)
  6. The Second Angel (1999)
  7. The Shot (1999)
  8. Dark Matter (2002)
  9. Hitler’s Peace (2005)
  10. One Small Step (As: P.B. Kerr) (2008)
  11. Prayer (2013)
  12. The Winter Horses (2014)
  13. Research (2014)
  14. The Most Frightening Story Ever Told (2016)

Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. The Pocket Handkerchief (2016)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Penguin Book of Lies (1984)

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Philip Kerr Books Overview

March Violets

Hailed by Salman Rushdie as a ‘brilliantly innovative thriller writer,’ Philip Kerr is the creator of taut, gripping, noir tinged mysteries that are nothing short of spellbinding. The first book of the Berlin Noir trilogy, March Violets introduces readers to Bernie Gunther, an ex policeman who thought he d seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin until he turned freelance and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Na*zi subculture. Hard hitting, fast paced, and richly detailed, March Violets is noir writing at its blackest and best.

The Pale Criminal

Hailed by Salman Rushdie as a brilliantly innovative thriller writer, Philip Kerr is the creator of taut, gripping, noir tinged mysteries that are nothing short of spellbinding. In this second book of the Berlin Noir trilogy, The Pale Criminal brings back Bernie Gunther, an ex policeman who thought he d seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin until he turned freelance and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Na*zi subculture. Hard hitting, fast paced, and richly detailed, The Pale Criminal is noir writing at its blackest and best.

A German Requiem

The disturbing climax to the Berlin Noir trilogy

Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels have won him an international reputation as a master of historical suspense. In A German Requiem, the private eye has survived the collapse of the Third Reich to find himself in Vienna. Amid decaying imperial splendor, he traces concentric circles of evil and uncovers a legacy that makes the wartime atrocities seem lily white in comparison.

The One from the Other

Germany, 1949: Amid the chaos of defeat, it’s a place of dirty deals, rampant greed, fleeing Na*zis, 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.

A Quiet Flame

Philip Kerr returns with his best loved character, Bernie Gunther, in the fifth novel in what is now a series: a tight, twisting, compelling thriller that is firmly rooted in history.

A Quiet Flame opens in 1950. Falsely fingered a war criminal, Bernie Gunther has booked passage to Buenos Aires, lured, like the Na*zis whose company he has always despised, by promises of a new life and a clean passport from the Per n government. But Bernie doesn t have the luxury of settling into his new home and lying low. He is soon pressured by the local police into taking on a case in which a girl has turned up dead, gruesomely mutilated, and another the daughter of a wealthy German banker has gone missing. Both crimes seem to connect to an unsolved case Bernie worked on back in Berlin in 1932. It’s not so far fetched that the cases might be linked: after all, the scum of the earth has been washing up on Argentine shores state licensed murderers and torturers so why couldn t a serial killer be among them?

But Argentina, just like Germany, holds terrible secrets within its corrupt halls of power. When beautiful Anna Yagubsky seeks Gunther out, desperate for help, to find out what happened to her Jewish aunt and uncle who have disappeared, he is drawn into a horror story that rivals everything he has tried so hard to leave behind half a world away.

In this new postwar world, Bernie Gunther is a man without a name or a country, but still in full possession of his conscience. He is the right kind of hero for his time and ours. Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

Field Gray

Philip Kerr delivers a novel with the noir sensibility of Raymond Chandler, the realpolitik of vintage John le Carr , and the dark moral vision of Graham Greene. ‘Bernie Gunther is the most antiheroic of antiheroes in this gripping, offbeat thriller. It’s the story of his struggle to preserve what’s left of his humanity, and his life, in a world where the moral bandwidth is narrow, satanic evil at one end, cynical expediency at the other.’ Philip Caputo, author of A Rumor of War ‘A thriller that will challenge preconceptions and stimulate the little grey cells.’ The Times London, selecting Field Gray as a Thriller of the Year ‘Part of the allure of these novels is that Bernie is such an interesting creation, a Chandleresque knight errant caught in insane historical surroundings. Bernie walks down streets so mean that nobody can stay alive and remain truly clean.’ John Powers, Fresh Air NPR Bernie on Bernie: I didn’t like Bernhard Gunther very much. He was cynical and world weary and hardly had a good word to say about anyone, least of all himself. He’d had a pretty tough war…
and done quite a few things of which he wasn’t proud…
. It had been no picnic for him since then either; it didn’t seem to matter where he spread life’s tartan rug, there was always a turd on the grass. Striding across Europe through the killing fields of three decades from riot torn Berlin in 1931 to Adenauer’s Germany in 1954, awash in duplicitous ‘allies’ busily undermining one another Field Gray reveals a world based on expediency, where the ends justify the means and no one can be trusted. It brings us a hero who is sardonic, tough talking, and cynical, but who does have a rough sense of humor and a rougher sense of right and wrong. He’s Bernie Gunther. He drinks too much and smokes excessively and is somewhat overweight but a Russian prisoner of war camp will take care of those bad habits. He’s Bernie Gunther a brave man, because when there is nothing left to lose, honor rules.

If The Dead Rise Not

An instant classic in the Bernie Gunther series, with storytelling that is fresher and more vivid than ever. Berlin, 1934: The Na*zis have secured the 1936 Olympiad for the city but are facing foreign resistance. Hitler and Avery Brundage, the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, have connived to soft pedal Na*zi anti Semitism and convince America to participate. Bernie Gunther, now the house detective at an upscale Berlin hotel, is swept into this world of international corruption and dangerous double dealing, caught between the warring factions of the Na*zi apparatus. Havana, 1954: Batista, aided by the CIA, has just seized power; Castro is in prison; and the American Mafia is quickly gaining a stranglehold on the city’s exploding gaming and prostitution industries. Bernie, who has been unceremoniously kicked out of Buenos Aires, has resurfaced in Cuba with a new life, seemingly one of routine and relative peace. But Bernie discovers that he truly cannot outrun the burden of his past: He soon collides with a vicious killer from his Berlin days, who is mysteriously murdered not long afterward and an old lover, who may be the murderer. If The Dead Rise Not is everything fans have come to expect from Philip Kerr: twisted intrigue, tight plotting, quick witted one liners, a hang by your thumbs ending, and, most significant, a richer, wiser Bernie Gunther.

Prague Fatale

September 1941: Reinhard Heydrich is hosting a gathering to celebrate his appointment as Reichsprotector of Czechoslovakia. He has chosen his guests with care. All are high ranking Party members and each is a suspect in a crime as yet to be committed: the murder of Heydrich himself. Indeed, a murder does occur, but the victim is a young adjutant on Heydrich’s staff, found dead in his room, the door and windows bolted from the inside. Anticipating foul play, Heydrich had already ordered Bernie Gunther to Prague. After more than a decade in Berlin’s Kripo, Bernie had jumped ship as the Na*zis came to power, setting himself up as a private detective. But Heydrich, who managed to subsume Kripo into his own SS operations, has forced Bernie back to police work. Now, searching for the killer, Gunther must pick through the lives of some of the Reich s most odious officials. A perfect locked room mystery. But because Philip Kerr is a master of the sleight of hand, Prague Fatale is also a tense political thriller: a complex tale of spies, partisan terrorists, vicious infighting, and a turncoat traitor situated in the upper reaches of the Third Reich.

The Akhenaten Adventure

From acclaimed thriller writer Philip Kerr comes an exceptional, imaginative adventure trilogy about a twin boy and girl with magical powers. Meet John and Philippa Gaunt, twelve year old twins who one day discover themselves to be descended from a long line of djinn. All of a sudden, they have the power to grant wishes, travel to extraordinary places and not necessarily on public transportation, and make people and objects disappear. Luckily and luck does have something to do with it, the twins are introduced to their eccentric djinn Uncle Nimrod, who will teach them how to harness their newly found power. And not a moment too soon!

The Blue Djinn of Babylon

From acclaimed thriller writer Philip Kerr comes the second volume in this imaginative adventure trilogy about a twin boy and girl who discover they are descendants of a djinn, or genie. John and Philippa Gaunt, twelve year old twins who have recently discovered themselves to be descended from a long line of djinn and in possession of magical powers, continue on their extraordinary adventures in this sequel to THE AKHENATEN ADVENTURE. When a powerful book of djinn magic goes missing, John and Philippa are called upon to retrieve it. Only, the book isn’t really missing. The trap was set and Philippa is abducted by the Blue Djinn. In this latest installment of the twins’ magical adventures, John and his uncle Nimrod must find Philippa before it’s too late.

The Cobra King of Kathmandu

From the NY Times bestselling author P.B. Kerr, comes the third volume in this imaginative adventure series about a twin boy and girl who discover they are djinns. Format: 8 CDs, UnabridgedIn the third book of this bestselling Children of the Lamp series, djinn twins, John and Philippa Gaunt, are on the trail of another magical mystery. As they travel from New York to London to Nepal and India on a whirlwind adventure, the twins try to help their friend and fellow djinn, Buck, find out who murdered his friend using the venomous snakebite of the king cobra. All too soon, John and Philippa find themserlves caught up in the lethal world of the Cult of the Nine Cobras, only to discover that they themselves are a target of the creepy cobra cult. NARRATED by Ron Keith

The Day of the Djinn Warriors

Djinn twins John and Philippa are off on another whirlwind adventure that takes them around the globe and into unknown worlds. And it’s a race against time as they attempt to rescue their mother from her fate as the Blue Djinn of Babylon. An aging curse has been placed on their father and if the twins are gone too long, he’ll rapidly become an old man.

Meanwhile, museums all over the world are reporting robberies of valuable jade from their collections, as well as bizarre hauntings.

As the twins and their friends travel around the globe on their rescue mission, they notice that something very strange is happening: An evil force has awakened the terracotta warriors created by an ancient Chinese emperor, and someone with very bad intentions has cast a spell possessing the soldiers with wicked spirits. And now, the very fate of the world hangs in the balance.

Can the twins stop the mysterious terracotta warriors, rescue their parents, AND save the world before it’s too late?

Readers will devour this exciting fourth installment from master storyteller P. B. Kerr, and they won’t want to put this book down until the very last page!

* * * * *

Philip Kerr was born in Edinburgh and lives in London. This is P. B. Kerr’s fourth novel for children, and he is well known as the thriller-writer Philip Kerr, author of the Berlin Noir trilogy, A PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATION, GRIDIRON, THE SHOT, and several other acclaimed thrillers.

The Eye of the Forest

In their latest adventure, John and Philippa Gaunt find themselves tangled up in a spellbinding mystery that takes them deep into the heart of the Amazon jungle in book five of the NY TIMES bestselling Children of the Lamp series. When a collection of Incan artifacts goes missing, the Blue Djinn of Babylon dispatches the twins and Uncle Nimrod to recover them. Along the way, though, John and Philippa encounter their friend Dybbuk, who was drained of his djinn powers but is determined to get them back. In a fury, he’s headed to an ancient Incan Empire where he believes he can regain his strength. Dybbuk will stop at nothing…
even if it means destroying the rain forest, opening a cursed portal, and disturbing the enchanted kingdom of the Incas that has slept for thousands of years. Can the twins stop their friend before he destroys everything? Praise for the Children of the Lamp series: ‘Kerr puts an ingenious spin on the enchanted lamp theme in his first novel for children…
.’ BOOKLIST ‘A breakneck paced, Indiana Jones style adventure…
. Kerr keeps the emphasis on fun, making this the first in a series worth watching.’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ‘…
the humor is just right, the captivating world of the djinn is faultlessly depicted and expanded, and Kerr balances the resolution with enough uncertainties to draw readers back for the next installment. This work is likely to win new fans as well as please those who enjoyed the previous book.’ VOICE OF YOUTH ADVOCATES ‘Kerr brings a wealth of invention and a solid grounding of research into djinn legends to his creation, giving the story and its deftly varied episodes a rich texture…
. Capable writing and a well shaped plot will reward fans returning to this series.’ THE HORN BOOK

The Five Fakirs of Faizabad

John and Philippa Gaunt are all ready for their lives to return to normal now that their mother has given up her djinn powers. But the siblings are quickly drawn into yet another mystery when the world’s luck tips wildly out of balance to the world’s detriment. The key to the world’s fate lies with five fakirs who were buried alive, each of whom guards a secret that can answer a great question of the universe. But there’s an evil djinn desperate to dig up the secrets. Without their mother’s powerful magic, John and Philippa must face this djinn alone. Traveling around the globe, from London, to Morocco, to Yellowstone National Park, to snowy Himalayan peaks of Shangri La, can the twins harness their own powers to defeat a new evil? Praise for the Children of the Lamp series: ‘Kerr puts an ingenious spin on the enchanted lamp theme in his first novel for children…
.’ BOOKLIST ‘A breakneck paced, Indiana Jones style adventure…
. Kerr keeps the emphasis on fun…
.’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ‘ T he humor is just right, the captivating world of the djinn is faultlessly depicted and expanded, and Kerr balances the resolution with enough uncertainties to draw readers back for the next installment. This work is likely to win new fans as well as please those who enjoyed the previous book.’ VOICE OF YOUTH ADVOCATES ‘Kerr brings a wealth of invention and a solid grounding of research into djinn legends to his creation, giving the story and its deftly varied episodes a rich texture…
. Capable writing and a well shaped plot will reward fans returning to this series.’ THE HORN BOOK

A Philosophical Investigation

A terrifyingly prescient cult classic by the author of the Berlin Noir trilogy LONDON, 2013. Serial killings have reached epidemic proportions even with the widespread government use of DNA detection, brain imaging, and the ‘punitive coma.’ Beautiful, whip smart, and driven by demons of her own, Detective Isadora ‘Jake’ Jacowicz must stop a murderer, code named ‘Wittgenstein,’ who has taken it upon himself to eliminate any man who has tested posi tive for a tendency towards violent behavior even if his victim has never committed a crime. Philip Kerr is winning more acclaim than ever for his beloved Bernie Gunther series and with Kerr’s higher profile A Philosophical Investigation is poised to capture an all new readership with its riveting tale of a killer whose intellectual brilliance is matched only by his homicidal madness.

Dead Meat

Investigating possible corruption in the Central Investigation Board, a Moscow detective is sent to St. Petersburg to spy on a police officer who he admires and the widow of a famous journalist who has been murdered. NYT. PW.

Gridiron / The Grid

In the heart of Los Angeles, the ‘smart’ building nicknamed ‘the Grid’ can talk to its occupants, forecast the weather, and tell if any inhabitant has been taking drugs. On the eve of its opening, the key players gather to put the finishing touches on their masterpiece of architecture and computer science. Then something goes terribly wrong, and people begin to die. Now the creators must stop their creation before it kills them all, one by one.

Esau

In an ice cave high on a forbidden Himalayan mountaintop, renegade climber Jack Furness unearths a perfectly preserved skull, a fossil that may be the missing link and the scientific discovery of the century. To Berkeley paleoanthropologist Stella Swift, the miraculous find warrants an immediate expedition up the mountain’s treacherous Fish Tail Peak. But with neighboring Pakistan and India on the brink of nuclear catastrophe, the Pentagon and the GA have their own designs on the remote site. Now, they’re all about to enter a domain where one of nature’s fiercest creations has thrived for millions of years and modern man was never meant to be.

A Five-Year Plan

Serving a sentence for manslaughter he didn’t commit, Dave Delano spent five years in prison calculating a flawless get rich quick plan: a simple hijacking on the high seas.

The Second Angel

THE YEAR IS 2069, THE CENTENNIAL OF THE APOLLO 11 MOON WALK. Earth has been irrevocably altered by global climatic changes and a worldwide plague of P2 a slow acting, insidious virus. The Moon, now populated by penal colonies and sex hotels, also protects mankind’s most sought after and vital commodity virus free blood in the most impregnable high security installation ever engineered. The First National Blood Bank is the brainchild of security firm Terotech’s chief designer, Dana Dallas. But after Dallas’ P2 infected daughter is denied uncontaminated blood, he is considered a security risk and expendable. With his life on the line, and his family caught in the cross fire, Dallas swears revenge on the elitist system and his own creation. Enlisting an eclectic crew of rebels, he devises a daring plan to infiltrate the lunar fortress one that will jeopardize everyone involved, and hinges on a very strange and unforeseen ally. In The Second Angel, acclaimed novelist Philip Kerr convincingly mixes prophecy and science in a dark, dystopian, high velocity thriller that rockets toward its explosive conclusion.

The Shot

The year is 1960. Psycho is playing in movie houses. Business is booming at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club. And on black and white television sets, America is watching the Nixon Kennedy debates. While the world turns, some people share a staggering secret: the Mob, the CIA, and the next president of the United States are all in bed together with a hit man and a plan to kill Fidel Castro. Tom Jefferson kills for a living, and he’s very good at his job. Fresh off a one hundred and fifty yard takedown of a Na*zi in Buenos Aires, Tom has now walked into a room full of wise guys and Company men in Coral Gables. The mobsters want Cuba back. Presidential candidate Jack Kennedy has promised they’ll get it. Because Mob boss Sam Giancana has fixed the November election, he knows JFK will be in a position to deliver. And because the Mafia has incriminating tapes of Jack’s sexual escapades, they know he’ll keep his promise. Tom is the man they all want for the shooting of Castro. And he couldn’t care less what his clients’ motives are or why. Tom has a good life, a beautiful wife, and the perfect fall guy for the Castro hit. But as Tom gets ready for his trip to Cuba, a corrupt FBI acquaintance lures him to a safe house where he’s exposed to explosive information, Now, the perfect hit is turning into the perfect nightmare for the Mob, the CIA, and the United States. That’s because cool, murdering Tom Jefferson has gone missing and the word is out that he’s no longer gunning for Fidel Castro, but for Jack Kennedy…
. From the brilliant mind of Philip Kerr, The Shot is a wild roller coaster ride through the cultural, political, and social landscape of the 1960s a mesmerizing thriller that elevates conspiracy theory into a hugely entertaining art form and sheds an eerie light on the events in 1963 Dallas. With its cast of fictional and real characters icons from DiMaggio to Monroe Kerr’s masterful new novel captures a Cold War, black and white society on the verge of a decade of dizzying, confusing Technicolor.

Dark Matter

I swore not to tell this story while Newton was still alive. 1696, young Christopher Ellis is sent to the Tower of London, but not as a prisoner. Though Ellis is notoriously hotheaded and was caught fighting an illegal duel, he arrives at the Tower as assistant to the renowned scientist Sir Isaac Newton. Newton is Warden of the Royal Mint, which resides within the Tower walls, and he has accepted an appointment from the King of England and Parliament to investigate and prosecute counterfeiters whose false coins threaten to bring down the shaky, war weakened economy. Ellis may lack Newton’s scholarly mind, but he is quick with a pistol and proves himself to be an invaluable sidekick and devoted apprentice to Newton as they zealously pursue these criminals. While Newton and Ellis investigate a counterfeiting ring, they come upon a mysterious coded message on the body of a man killed in the Lion Tower, as well as alchemical symbols that indicate this was more than just a random murder. Despite Newton s formidable intellect, he is unable to decipher the cryptic message or any of the others he and Ellis find as the body count increases within the Tower complex. As they are drawn into a wild pursuit of the counterfeiters that takes them from the madhouse of Bedlam to the squalid confines of Newgate prison and back to the Tower itself, Newton and Ellis discover that the counterfeiting is only a small part of a larger, more dangerous plot, one that reaches to the highest echelons of power and nobility and threatens much more than the collapse of the economy. Dark Matter is the lastest masterwork of suspense from Philip Kerr, the internationally bestselling and brilliantly innovative thriller writer who has dazzled readers with his imaginative, fast paced novels. Like An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose, and Kerr s own Berlin Noir trilogy, Dark Matter is historical mystery at its finest, an extraordinary, suspense filled journey through the shadowy streets and back alleys of London with the brilliant Newton and his faithful prot g . The haunted Tower with its bloody history is the perfect backdrop for this richly satisfying tale, one that introduces an engrossing mystery into the volatile mix of politics, science, and religion that characterized life in seventeenth century London. From the Hardcover edition.

Hitler’s Peace

A stunning World War II ‘what if’ thriller in which the fate of Europe and of its remaining 3 million Jews hangs in the balance. Autumn 1943. Since Stalingrad, Hitler has known that Germany cannot win the war. The upcoming Allied conference in Teheran will set the ground rules for their second front and for the peace to come. Realizing that the unconditional surrender FDR has demanded will leave Germany in ruins, Hitler has put out peace feelers. Unbeknownst to him, so has Himmler, who is ready to stage a coup in order to reach an accord. FDR and Stalin are willing to negotiate. Only Churchill refuses to listen. At the center of this high stakes game of deals and doubledealing is Willard Mayer, an OSS operative who has been chosen by FDR to serve as his envoy. He is the perfect foil for the steamy world of deception, betrayals, and assassinations that make up the moral universe of realpolitik. A cool, self absorbed, emotionally distant womanizer with a questionable past, Mayer has embraced the stylish philosophy of the day, in which no values are fixed. In the course of the novel, his beliefs will be put to the ultimate test. But as compelling as Mayer is, the key players in this drama FDR, Stalin, Churchill, and Hitler, as well as Himmler, Bormann, Molotov, and Schellenberg with marvelous walk ons by Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, and Evelyn Waugh are astonishingly true to life. Hitler’s Peace is Philip Kerr in top form. With his sure hand for pacing, his firm grasp of historical detail, and his explosively creative imagination about what might have been, he has fashioned a totally convincing thinking man’s thriller in the great tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.

One Small Step (As: P.B. Kerr)

It’s 1969, and thirteen year old Scott is doing all the things that normal boys do and also flying airplanes with his Air Force flight instructor father. When Scott successfully crash lands a training plane, NASA takes notice. They hope to recruit him for their top secret space program, which will launch a test flight to the moon before the first lunar landing. This craft was intended to be piloted by chimps, but one chimp had to be dismissed, and now they need a quick substitute who better than a boy aviator?

Soon Scott is on his way to the NASA training facility. There he’s surprised to discover just how clever and competent the chimps are they’re able to control the flight simulators like regular astronauts do. The chimps are more like humans than Scott ever imagined, so why, then, did one of them go crazy? Is there something about this mission that NASA isn’t telling him?

G forces collide with government secrets as Scott races to prepare for his journey to the moon. Brim*ming with nonstop action and adventure, this is the story of a courageous young man who dares to follow his dream.

The Penguin Book of Lies

In this anthology of ‘terminological inexactitudes’, ‘economies with the truth’ and whopping untruths, Philip Kerr has come up with examples of the art of lying from the era of the Bible and Plato through to slippery government spokesmen in modern Britain and America. Intriguing quotations reveal how non existent islands were ‘discovered’, how the Pope helped Lucretia Borgia regain her virginity, and how Richard III was given his hump. Casanova’s and Napoleon’s versions of their conquests and adventures should both be taken with a pinch of salt, whilst Nero, Baron Corvo, Rousseau and Richard Nixon all spread equally one sided accounts of their actions. Throughout history, Kerr shows, atrocities have been invented, statistics rigged, enemies smeared and org*asms faked. Many of these lies make entertaining reading. Less comfortable are the accounts of Churchill’s D day deceptions, of journalists who covered up Stalin’s Ukrainian famines, and of countries so consumed by public mendacity that the only truth is the graffiti on the toilet walls.

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