Goddamit. We’ll drink one for Bernie Gunther tonight.
Damn. I knew Philip, edited and published two of his novels here in the U.S., wined and dined him in Manhattan.
Extraordinarily talented man. So sorry. Comforting thoughts to his wife and chilluns.
Well crap. I was just thinking about his Gunther novels, as there’s a new release scheduled for April 3rd. When I first got online in the 1990s I wrote a review of the Berlin Noir trilogy; years later people would post and e-mail me about how it introduced them to Kerr.
The Guardian’s obituary says it was cancer. It also says that, beyond next month’s Greeks Bearing Gifts, he was in the final stages of copyediting another novel for publication next year, but doesn’t say if it’ll also be a Bernie one.
According to Kerr himself, the 2019 release will be another Gunther novel. So that’s still two of them to look forward to.
Wow. Some of the best thrillers out there.
Kerr had testicle cancer, which he thought was under control, but found out recently had spread to his kidneys. His doctors told him he had three months to live, but he died three days later.
My wife’s a honcho at his current US publisher, so that’s the straight dope. The folks at Putnam were in tears today.