Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem

by Philip Kerr

with lawyers I always assume that they came by their wealth and position through avarice and by means nefarious:

We waited in the library. It wasn’t big by the standards of a Bismarck or a Hindenburg, and you couldn’t have packed more than six cars between the Reichstag-sized desk and the door.

the kind of place where the rats wore ear-plugs and the cockroaches had nasty coughs.

booze always made Bruno chattier than an Italian waiter.

‘Claims to have information about an old case of mine. A missing person that stayed missing.’ ‘Sure, I remember them like I remember dogs with tails. Very unusual.

Like a fat cheque, it was a gun that always endowed me with a feeling of quiet confidence when I slipped it into my coat pocket.

Pipe-smokers are the grandmasters of fiddling and fidgeting, and as great a blight on our world as a missionary landing on Tahiti with a boxful of brassieres.

Judged as a whole, Herbertstrasse was like an assemblage of old field-marshals and grand-admirals in full-dress-uniforms obliged to sit on extremely small and inadequate camp stools.

‘it’s nice to make ends meet, but it’s even nicer if you can tie a bow.’

Her thickly accented, languorous voice seemed to start somewhere near the bottom of her corset,

Vogelmann resembled a breed of prehistoric cockerel, and one that had positively begged for extinction.

On the town, late at night, was not the best time to compare Vienna to any metropolis, with the possible exception of the lost city of Atlantis.

a high yellow-brick wall which enclosed a large, yellow-painted house and a garden that looked as if it had spent all day in the beauty parlour.