Easy and practical, the ICF-C318S radio alarm clock from Sony includes an analogue FM/PO tuner to entertain you or wake you up to music. Equipped with snooze and calendar functions, the ICF-C318S will automatically adjust to summer or winter time thanks to the DST button. In addition, the ICF-C318S radio alarm clock comes with a security battery that saves your time and alarm settings in case of power cuts.

Perfect., 08 Sep 2008
Just what i was looking for.

Dual alarms, so you dont have to hit the snooze button 5 times before you get out of bed. Both alarms can be set differently [radio comes on at 645, if your still not up, buzzer can go off at 0700] and both are extremely easy to set.
great radio receiver and decent quality sound. glad i bought the right one after searching through amazons selection.

DISPLAY CANNOT BE SEEN IN BRIGHT DAYLIGHT, 06 May 2008
Not a bad clock radio, huge drawback is you cannot see the display during the daytime, both Sony models suffer from this, sending mine back today!!!

Clock radio, 28 Feb 2008
A good clock radio. Dual alarm is handy if you over sleep like i do or if two peolpe need to get up at different times. Large clear display, although quite bright even on the dim setting. I like the automatic time set and reset if there is a power cut, we have several where we live and I work shifts, so not a good combination.
On the whole very pleased with it.

Perfect., 08 Sep 2008
Just what i was looking for.

Dual alarms, so you dont have to hit the snooze button 5 times before you get out of bed. Both alarms can be set differently [radio comes on at 645, if your still not up, buzzer can go off at 0700] and both are extremely easy to set.
great radio receiver and decent quality sound. glad i bought the right one after searching through amazons selection.

DISPLAY CANNOT BE SEEN IN BRIGHT DAYLIGHT, 06 May 2008
Not a bad clock radio, huge drawback is you cannot see the display during the daytime, both Sony models suffer from this, sending mine back today!!!

Clock radio, 28 Feb 2008
A good clock radio. Dual alarm is handy if you over sleep like i do or if two peolpe need to get up at different times. Large clear display, although quite bright even on the dim setting. I like the automatic time set and reset if there is a power cut, we have several where we live and I work shifts, so not a good combination.
On the whole very pleased with it.

Excellent practice for those wanting reading skills, 17 Feb 2006
I bought this book on the basis of the review by another Amazon reader. He sounded like he was doing what I wanted to do - acquire reading skills. And he is right - this is an excellent reader. There's a wide range of stories and the translations on the opposite page are excellent. There is also an extensive vocabulary at the back and questions so you don't need a dictionary with you. There are brief introductions to each author, in English. It is excellent value for money and the language is sufficiently difficult to challenge anyone with reasonable skills in French but not so difficult as to make the task impossible. My level was just post O level (I didn't do A level but I had done an extra year of conversation). But I haven't touched French for more years than I care to admit. Along with some grammar books, this has really helped to build my confidence and my vocabulary and it hasn't been painful. Many of the books are geared towards children or people wanting conversations skills so I found this a good way to get the skills I wanted. The stories are short and the styles are varied so even if one particular story doesn't appeal to you, you see a different style of expression and the effort is worth it. I wish there were more like it!

Excellent stories in French with English on opposite page, 25 Jul 1998
First read this book in 1960 in college, cost 75 cents. Now relearning French and enjoying the stories, reading first the French and using the opposite page English to check my understanding and translate words and phases I don't know. This is an excellent way to enjoy interesting stories and enlarge one's French painlessly. Ordering a new copy as mine is disintegrating with age (as is the reviewer).

Perfect., 08 Sep 2008
Just what i was looking for.

Dual alarms, so you dont have to hit the snooze button 5 times before you get out of bed. Both alarms can be set differently [radio comes on at 645, if your still not up, buzzer can go off at 0700] and both are extremely easy to set.
great radio receiver and decent quality sound. glad i bought the right one after searching through amazons selection.

DISPLAY CANNOT BE SEEN IN BRIGHT DAYLIGHT, 06 May 2008
Not a bad clock radio, huge drawback is you cannot see the display during the daytime, both Sony models suffer from this, sending mine back today!!!

Clock radio, 28 Feb 2008
A good clock radio. Dual alarm is handy if you over sleep like i do or if two peolpe need to get up at different times. Large clear display, although quite bright even on the dim setting. I like the automatic time set and reset if there is a power cut, we have several where we live and I work shifts, so not a good combination.
On the whole very pleased with it.

Excellent practice for those wanting reading skills, 17 Feb 2006
I bought this book on the basis of the review by another Amazon reader. He sounded like he was doing what I wanted to do - acquire reading skills. And he is right - this is an excellent reader. There's a wide range of stories and the translations on the opposite page are excellent. There is also an extensive vocabulary at the back and questions so you don't need a dictionary with you. There are brief introductions to each author, in English. It is excellent value for money and the language is sufficiently difficult to challenge anyone with reasonable skills in French but not so difficult as to make the task impossible. My level was just post O level (I didn't do A level but I had done an extra year of conversation). But I haven't touched French for more years than I care to admit. Along with some grammar books, this has really helped to build my confidence and my vocabulary and it hasn't been painful. Many of the books are geared towards children or people wanting conversations skills so I found this a good way to get the skills I wanted. The stories are short and the styles are varied so even if one particular story doesn't appeal to you, you see a different style of expression and the effort is worth it. I wish there were more like it!

Excellent stories in French with English on opposite page, 25 Jul 1998
First read this book in 1960 in college, cost 75 cents. Now relearning French and enjoying the stories, reading first the French and using the opposite page English to check my understanding and translate words and phases I don't know. This is an excellent way to enjoy interesting stories and enlarge one's French painlessly. Ordering a new copy as mine is disintegrating with age (as is the reviewer).

Serial misogynist?, 19 Jun 2008
I'm not a huge fan of detective or crime stories. I've read a few of the modern crop. Starring world weary cops/forensic pathologists/police photographers etc who are so much better than their incompetent colleagues, yet drink like fishes at a curry contest and get off with every woman they meet. John Actor plays Monkfish etc. Yawn. But a detective in Nazi Germany? That sounded interesting: historically intriguing, and ethically too. A policeman floundering in a corrupt society, full of the echoes of history.

Unfortunately, what I found were all the usual clichés, plus a lot worse. Unreal dialogue, plentiful name-dropping: oh yes, and a low ranking detective who talks back to the likes of Heydrich, Himmler, and Göring.

Dialogue is often nonsensical. Like when Bernie agrees with Heydrich not to humiliate Himmler in front of his SS subordinates - and then goes on to do just that. Plot devices are daft too: Bernie begs an armed assassin to shoot him in the head, not the stomach, as it'll save him a lot of pain (and thereby impresses us with Bernie's knowledge of the foibles of certain WWI era firearms). As if the assassin would give a damn. Talk about a crow-bar plot.

Furthermore, there's an unpleasant tendency towards misogyny in these books. They glory in it. Admittedly men are killed in the stories, too. But Kerr seems rather hung up on plotlines involving the graphic torture and mutilation of women. I think it's just a tad sick that all three of these books recycle the same misogynistic theme. But that's just me I guess, eh?

And the final story: German Requiem. A cringe-inducing knock-off of The Third Man (though Kerr seems to be under the impression that it's his work that is the better of the two). Apparently German Requiem is about a `scandal that makes the wartime atrocities pale in comparison'. All I can say is the atrocities committed by both sides during the war were rather more shocking than Kerr's petty storyline.

You want a real feel for history then read Len Deighton's masterful spy series: Game, Set, and Match; Hook, Line and Sinker; and Faith, Hope, and Charity; Winter: A Berlin Family 1899-1945. They positively drip the stuff. History, that is.

And then read Bomber.

Highly recommendable :), 30 Mar 2008
I can highly recommend anyone who is interested in German and European history and want to have a interesting read at the same time.

I am at the same time an amateur expert on the period, and I have not found a single historical or geographical mistake, which is not the case with Alan Fursts "Night Soldiers", which I have also reviewed on this site.

All the Berlin Noir stories should be made into films :))

A German Sam Spade, 16 May 2007
Bernie Gunther is an ex Kripo (German CID) officer working as a private detective in pre and post war Berlin. He is tough, cynical and wisecraking, but also honest and decent. In fact he is Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe transplaned from California to Germany. Bernie's job brings him into contact with historical figures like Himmler, Goering and Artur Nebe, the real life wartime head of the German Kripo.

Philip Kerr is one of those writers who can transplant you into a different world, in this case pre and post war Germany. In doing so he has created a number of slang terms which I do not know if they are real German slang but it does not matter as they sound right.

Berlin Noir contains three out of four Bernie Gunther novels, March Violets, The Pale Criminal and German Requiem. The first of these also concerns the German Rings who Mafia like controlled crime in pre Nazi Berlin. The Rings were destroyed by more violent criminals, the Nazis.

The Pale Criminal has Bernie recruited back into the Berlin Police in order to catch a serial killer who may be linked to the ruling Nazi Party. German Requiem moves to post war Berlin and Vienna with refences to the Third Man.

All three stand up in their own right and Mr Kerr can be congratulated on coming up with a new idea and for being able to create a milleu as well as being able to plot and write very well indeed.

Bernie Gunther is welcome and different addition to the ranks of fictional dectectives

A knight without armor in a savage land, 20 Nov 2006
"A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled." Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was a master at taking a plot and distilling it into a taut, splendid story. Chandler, along with Dashiell Hammett, pretty much invented the "hard-boiled detective". So, when a writer, in this instance Philip Kerr, comes along who is repeatedly compared to Raymond Chandler comes along, I can't resist seeing for myself. I'm happy I picked up Berlin Noir and, even if Kerr is not quite Chandler, his stories are so well written that he need not be embarrassed by the comparison.

Berlin Noir consists of three Kerr novels, "March Violets", "The Pale Criminal", and "German Requiem". They each feature Kerr's exquisitely drawn detective Bernie Gunther. If you've read Hammett, Cain, or Chandler, Gunther is instantly recognizable. He's a tough ex-cop now working as a private eye. He's bitter and cynical and sees the corruption all around him. He also has an eye for the ladies as well as a taste for booze. But for all his flaws he lives up to a certain code; he knows the world isn't black and white but he has his own moral compass and lives by it - for the most part.

What distinguishes Gunther from Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe is location. Gunther is a German, and instead of Los Angeles, he makes his base in Berlin. The three stories are set in 1936 (March Violets"), 1938 ("Pale Criminal"), and 1947 (the aptly named "German Requiem") against the backdrop of the rise and fall of Hitler's Nazi Germany. He left the Berlin police once the force became nothing more than a tool of the new regime. The time and setting are perfect for a genre in which shades of grey dominate the palette. Gunther is tasked with solving crimes while navigating the Byzantine-maze of inter-party rivalries, many of which are deadly.

I was fascinated by Gunther and the world Kerry paints for him. I usually take a break in between books that are part of a series but I couldn't do that with the three stories in Berlin Noir. They are all well-crafted and suspenseful. Although Kerr is clearing paying homage to his genre the stories are original and not generic. In other words Kerr is not the literary equivalent of an Elvis-impersonator. He has written these stories within the confines of a genre but has not sacrificed his own voice. The plots are complex but not so complex that they cannot be followed. With each story the personality of Gunther becomes a bit clearer so that by the time the reader is finished with them, Gunther is really a fully-formed and very believable character.

Kerr has just published a new Bernie Gunther novel entitled "The One from the Other". I am about one third of the way through it. It is an excellent sequel made all the more enjoyable by having read "Berlin Noir". Highly recommended. L. Fleisig


The Long Goodbye (To Berlin), 26 Feb 2004
Formulaic Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett rip offs set in pre and post-war Germany. The conception is OK, and a policeman working on a murder case in a society which is itself utterly evil is a fairly interesting idea. But it doesn't work. The Chandler model in particular is shamelessly aped which, as James Ellroy has said elsewhere, is not the way to write detective fiction. You can't copy such a highly stylized technique, certainly not as clumsily as Kerr does. Some of the metaphors will make you wince - and not in the way they are supposed to. Even the hero's world weary cynicism and unlikely ability to cop off with every woman he meets (sixteen year old Hitler Youth girls, movie stars, the ace reporter who helps him out) are copied from Marlowe. Other characters are pretty perfunctory and there's a bit more sex and violence but none of the genius that distinguished the other two. That's fair enough; not everyone can be a Hammett or Chandler, but by following their model so closely Kerr begs the reader to make the comparison and that's when things fall apart.

Perfect., 08 Sep 2008
Just what i was looking for.

Dual alarms, so you dont have to hit the snooze button 5 times before you get out of bed. Both alarms can be set differently [radio comes on at 645, if your still not up, buzzer can go off at 0700] and both are extremely easy to set.
great radio receiver and decent quality sound. glad i bought the right one after searching through amazons selection.

DISPLAY CANNOT BE SEEN IN BRIGHT DAYLIGHT, 06 May 2008
Not a bad clock radio, huge drawback is you cannot see the display during the daytime, both Sony models suffer from this, sending mine back today!!!

Clock radio, 28 Feb 2008
A good clock radio. Dual alarm is handy if you over sleep like i do or if two peolpe need to get up at different times. Large clear display, although quite bright even on the dim setting. I like the automatic time set and reset if there is a power cut, we have several where we live and I work shifts, so not a good combination.
On the whole very pleased with it.

Excellent practice for those wanting reading skills, 17 Feb 2006
I bought this book on the basis of the review by another Amazon reader. He sounded like he was doing what I wanted to do - acquire reading skills. And he is right - this is an excellent reader. There's a wide range of stories and the translations on the opposite page are excellent. There is also an extensive vocabulary at the back and questions so you don't need a dictionary with you. There are brief introductions to each author, in English. It is excellent value for money and the language is sufficiently difficult to challenge anyone with reasonable skills in French but not so difficult as to make the task impossible. My level was just post O level (I didn't do A level but I had done an extra year of conversation). But I haven't touched French for more years than I care to admit. Along with some grammar books, this has really helped to build my confidence and my vocabulary and it hasn't been painful. Many of the books are geared towards children or people wanting conversations skills so I found this a good way to get the skills I wanted. The stories are short and the styles are varied so even if one particular story doesn't appeal to you, you see a different style of expression and the effort is worth it. I wish there were more like it!

Excellent stories in French with English on opposite page, 25 Jul 1998
First read this book in 1960 in college, cost 75 cents. Now relearning French and enjoying the stories, reading first the French and using the opposite page English to check my understanding and translate words and phases I don't know. This is an excellent way to enjoy interesting stories and enlarge one's French painlessly. Ordering a new copy as mine is disintegrating with age (as is the reviewer).

Serial misogynist?, 19 Jun 2008
I'm not a huge fan of detective or crime stories. I've read a few of the modern crop. Starring world weary cops/forensic pathologists/police photographers etc who are so much better than their incompetent colleagues, yet drink like fishes at a curry contest and get off with every woman they meet. John Actor plays Monkfish etc. Yawn. But a detective in Nazi Germany? That sounded interesting: historically intriguing, and ethically too. A policeman floundering in a corrupt society, full of the echoes of history.

Unfortunately, what I found were all the usual clichés, plus a lot worse. Unreal dialogue, plentiful name-dropping: oh yes, and a low ranking detective who talks back to the likes of Heydrich, Himmler, and Göring.

Dialogue is often nonsensical. Like when Bernie agrees with Heydrich not to humiliate Himmler in front of his SS subordinates - and then goes on to do just that. Plot devices are daft too: Bernie begs an armed assassin to shoot him in the head, not the stomach, as it'll save him a lot of pain (and thereby impresses us with Bernie's knowledge of the foibles of certain WWI era firearms). As if the assassin would give a damn. Talk about a crow-bar plot.

Furthermore, there's an unpleasant tendency towards misogyny in these books. They glory in it. Admittedly men are killed in the stories, too. But Kerr seems rather hung up on plotlines involving the graphic torture and mutilation of women. I think it's just a tad sick that all three of these books recycle the same misogynistic theme. But that's just me I guess, eh?

And the final story: German Requiem. A cringe-inducing knock-off of The Third Man (though Kerr seems to be under the impression that it's his work that is the better of the two). Apparently German Requiem is about a `scandal that makes the wartime atrocities pale in comparison'. All I can say is the atrocities committed by both sides during the war were rather more shocking than Kerr's petty storyline.

You want a real feel for history then read Len Deighton's masterful spy series: Game, Set, and Match; Hook, Line and Sinker; and Faith, Hope, and Charity; Winter: A Berlin Family 1899-1945. They positively drip the stuff. History, that is.

And then read Bomber.

Highly recommendable :), 30 Mar 2008
I can highly recommend anyone who is interested in German and European history and want to have a interesting read at the same time.

I am at the same time an amateur expert on the period, and I have not found a single historical or geographical mistake, which is not the case with Alan Fursts "Night Soldiers", which I have also reviewed on this site.

All the Berlin Noir stories should be made into films :))

A German Sam Spade, 16 May 2007
Bernie Gunther is an ex Kripo (German CID) officer working as a private detective in pre and post war Berlin. He is tough, cynical and wisecraking, but also honest and decent. In fact he is Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe transplaned from California to Germany. Bernie's job brings him into contact with historical figures like Himmler, Goering and Artur Nebe, the real life wartime head of the German Kripo.

Philip Kerr is one of those writers who can transplant you into a different world, in this case pre and post war Germany. In doing so he has created a number of slang terms which I do not know if they are real German slang but it does not matter as they sound right.

Berlin Noir contains three out of four Bernie Gunther novels, March Violets, The Pale Criminal and German Requiem. The first of these also concerns the German Rings who Mafia like controlled crime in pre Nazi Berlin. The Rings were destroyed by more violent criminals, the Nazis.

The Pale Criminal has Bernie recruited back into the Berlin Police in order to catch a serial killer who may be linked to the ruling Nazi Party. German Requiem moves to post war Berlin and Vienna with refences to the Third Man.

All three stand up in their own right and Mr Kerr can be congratulated on coming up with a new idea and for being able to create a milleu as well as being able to plot and write very well indeed.

Bernie Gunther is welcome and different addition to the ranks of fictional dectectives

A knight without armor in a savage land, 20 Nov 2006
"A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled." Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was a master at taking a plot and distilling it into a taut, splendid story. Chandler, along with Dashiell Hammett, pretty much invented the "hard-boiled detective". So, when a writer, in this instance Philip Kerr, comes along who is repeatedly compared to Raymond Chandler comes along, I can't resist seeing for myself. I'm happy I picked up Berlin Noir and, even if Kerr is not quite Chandler, his stories are so well written that he need not be embarrassed by the comparison.

Berlin Noir consists of three Kerr novels, "March Violets", "The Pale Criminal", and "German Requiem". They each feature Kerr's exquisitely drawn detective Bernie Gunther. If you've read Hammett, Cain, or Chandler, Gunther is instantly recognizable. He's a tough ex-cop now working as a private eye. He's bitter and cynical and sees the corruption all around him. He also has an eye for the ladies as well as a taste for booze. But for all his flaws he lives up to a certain code; he knows the world isn't black and white but he has his own moral compass and lives by it - for the most part.

What distinguishes Gunther from Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe is location. Gunther is a German, and instead of Los Angeles, he makes his base in Berlin. The three stories are set in 1936 (March Violets"), 1938 ("Pale Criminal"), and 1947 (the aptly named "German Requiem") against the backdrop of the rise and fall of Hitler's Nazi Germany. He left the Berlin police once the force became nothing more than a tool of the new regime. The time and setting are perfect for a genre in which shades of grey dominate the palette. Gunther is tasked with solving crimes while navigating the Byzantine-maze of inter-party rivalries, many of which are deadly.

I was fascinated by Gunther and the world Kerry paints for him. I usually take a break in between books that are part of a series but I couldn't do that with the three stories in Berlin Noir. They are all well-crafted and suspenseful. Although Kerr is clearing paying homage to his genre the stories are original and not generic. In other words Kerr is not the literary equivalent of an Elvis-impersonator. He has written these stories within the confines of a genre but has not sacrificed his own voice. The plots are complex but not so complex that they cannot be followed. With each story the personality of Gunther becomes a bit clearer so that by the time the reader is finished with them, Gunther is really a fully-formed and very believable character.

Kerr has just published a new Bernie Gunther novel entitled "The One from the Other". I am about one third of the way through it. It is an excellent sequel made all the more enjoyable by having read "Berlin Noir". Highly recommended. L. Fleisig


The Long Goodbye (To Berlin), 26 Feb 2004
Formulaic Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett rip offs set in pre and post-war Germany. The conception is OK, and a policeman working on a murder case in a society which is itself utterly evil is a fairly interesting idea. But it doesn't work. The Chandler model in particular is shamelessly aped which, as James Ellroy has said elsewhere, is not the way to write detective fiction. You can't copy such a highly stylized technique, certainly not as clumsily as Kerr does. Some of the metaphors will make you wince - and not in the way they are supposed to. Even the hero's world weary cynicism and unlikely ability to cop off with every woman he meets (sixteen year old Hitler Youth girls, movie stars, the ace reporter who helps him out) are copied from Marlowe. Other characters are pretty perfunctory and there's a bit more sex and violence but none of the genius that distinguished the other two. That's fair enough; not everyone can be a Hammett or Chandler, but by following their model so closely Kerr begs the reader to make the comparison and that's when things fall apart.

A delight to read / Un placer a leer, 23 Jun 2008
I am so pleased to have found this book again, I used to own it once before and enjoyed its easy style but I gave it away to a South American friend who was learning English (she loves it!).

This book is so expertly executed that even if you have only a modest level of Spanish, it will strengthen what you've already got, provide you with new words and encourage you onto more.

It's set around 18 stories or myths or folklores from Spain's past, starting with the oldest first and working towards the newest last, with the Spanish and English presented on facing pages.

But each story is introduced by a one paragraph abstract which helps sets the scene for the story that follows. And each of the stories in turn are interesting and engaging in their own right.

Such is my confidence in this book, as well as reordering it, I'm also ordering the Latin American and Mexican versions from the same series at the same time.

If only all parallel books were made like this.


A good book for all stages, 24 Jun 2003
This book is not only a real help in coming to grips with a new language but also useful for those wishing to improve accuracy in written Spanish. Having the English translation next to the Spanish text means that your'e not constantly looking up dictionaries, so you can actually enjoy reading the stories. The stories show the rich cultural and historical side of this vast and interesting country, making the learning process a whole lot more practical too.

Perfect., 08 Sep 2008
Just what i was looking for.

Dual alarms, so you dont have to hit the snooze button 5 times before you get out of bed. Both alarms can be set differently [radio comes on at 645, if your still not up, buzzer can go off at 0700] and both are extremely easy to set.
great radio receiver and decent quality sound. glad i bought the right one after searching through amazons selection.

DISPLAY CANNOT BE SEEN IN BRIGHT DAYLIGHT, 06 May 2008
Not a bad clock radio, huge drawback is you cannot see the display during the daytime, both Sony models suffer from this, sending mine back today!!!

Clock radio, 28 Feb 2008
A good clock radio. Dual alarm is handy if you over sleep like i do or if two peolpe need to get up at different times. Large clear display, although quite bright even on the dim setting. I like the automatic time set and reset if there is a power cut, we have several where we live and I work shifts, so not a good combination.
On the whole very pleased with it.

Excellent practice for those wanting reading skills, 17 Feb 2006
I bought this book on the basis of the review by another Amazon reader. He sounded like he was doing what I wanted to do - acquire reading skills. And he is right - this is an excellent reader. There's a wide range of stories and the translations on the opposite page are excellent. There is also an extensive vocabulary at the back and questions so you don't need a dictionary with you. There are brief introductions to each author, in English. It is excellent value for money and the language is sufficiently difficult to challenge anyone with reasonable skills in French but not so difficult as to make the task impossible. My level was just post O level (I didn't do A level but I had done an extra year of conversation). But I haven't touched French for more years than I care to admit. Along with some grammar books, this has really helped to build my confidence and my vocabulary and it hasn't been painful. Many of the books are geared towards children or people wanting conversations skills so I found this a good way to get the skills I wanted. The stories are short and the styles are varied so even if one particular story doesn't appeal to you, you see a different style of expression and the effort is worth it. I wish there were more like it!

Excellent stories in French with English on opposite page, 25 Jul 1998
First read this book in 1960 in college, cost 75 cents. Now relearning French and enjoying the stories, reading first the French and using the opposite page English to check my understanding and translate words and phases I don't know. This is an excellent way to enjoy interesting stories and enlarge one's French painlessly. Ordering a new copy as mine is disintegrating with age (as is the reviewer).

Serial misogynist?, 19 Jun 2008
I'm not a huge fan of detective or crime stories. I've read a few of the modern crop. Starring world weary cops/forensic pathologists/police photographers etc who are so much better than their incompetent colleagues, yet drink like fishes at a curry contest and get off with every woman they meet. John Actor plays Monkfish etc. Yawn. But a detective in Nazi Germany? That sounded interesting: historically intriguing, and ethically too. A policeman floundering in a corrupt society, full of the echoes of history.

Unfortunately, what I found were all the usual clichés, plus a lot worse. Unreal dialogue, plentiful name-dropping: oh yes, and a low ranking detective who talks back to the likes of Heydrich, Himmler, and Göring.

Dialogue is often nonsensical. Like when Bernie agrees with Heydrich not to humiliate Himmler in front of his SS subordinates - and then goes on to do just that. Plot devices are daft too: Bernie begs an armed assassin to shoot him in the head, not the stomach, as it'll save him a lot of pain (and thereby impresses us with Bernie's knowledge of the foibles of certain WWI era firearms). As if the assassin would give a damn. Talk about a crow-bar plot.

Furthermore, there's an unpleasant tendency towards misogyny in these books. They glory in it. Admittedly men are killed in the stories, too. But Kerr seems rather hung up on plotlines involving the graphic torture and mutilation of women. I think it's just a tad sick that all three of these books recycle the same misogynistic theme. But that's just me I guess, eh?

And the final story: German Requiem. A cringe-inducing knock-off of The Third Man (though Kerr seems to be under the impression that it's his work that is the better of the two). Apparently German Requiem is about a `scandal that makes the wartime atrocities pale in comparison'. All I can say is the atrocities committed by both sides during the war were rather more shocking than Kerr's petty storyline.

You want a real feel for history then read Len Deighton's masterful spy series: Game, Set, and Match; Hook, Line and Sinker; and Faith, Hope, and Charity; Winter: A Berlin Family 1899-1945. They positively drip the stuff. History, that is.

And then read Bomber.

Highly recommendable :), 30 Mar 2008
I can highly recommend anyone who is interested in German and European history and want to have a interesting read at the same time.

I am at the same time an amateur expert on the period, and I have not found a single historical or geographical mistake, which is not the case with Alan Fursts "Night Soldiers", which I have also reviewed on this site.

All the Berlin Noir stories should be made into films :))

A German Sam Spade, 16 May 2007
Bernie Gunther is an ex Kripo (German CID) officer working as a private detective in pre and post war Berlin. He is tough, cynical and wisecraking, but also honest and decent. In fact he is Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe transplaned from California to Germany. Bernie's job brings him into contact with historical figures like Himmler, Goering and Artur Nebe, the real life wartime head of the German Kripo.

Philip Kerr is one of those writers who can transplant you into a different world, in this case pre and post war Germany. In doing so he has created a number of slang terms which I do not know if they are real German slang but it does not matter as they sound right.

Berlin Noir contains three out of four Bernie Gunther novels, March Violets, The Pale Criminal and German Requiem. The first of these also concerns the German Rings who Mafia like controlled crime in pre Nazi Berlin. The Rings were destroyed by more violent criminals, the Nazis.

The Pale Criminal has Bernie recruited back into the Berlin Police in order to catch a serial killer who may be linked to the ruling Nazi Party. German Requiem moves to post war Berlin and Vienna with refences to the Third Man.

All three stand up in their own right and Mr Kerr can be congratulated on coming up with a new idea and for being able to create a milleu as well as being able to plot and write very well indeed.

Bernie Gunther is welcome and different addition to the ranks of fictional dectectives

A knight without armor in a savage land, 20 Nov 2006
"A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled." Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was a master at taking a plot and distilling it into a taut, splendid story. Chandler, along with Dashiell Hammett, pretty much invented the "hard-boiled detective". So, when a writer, in this instance Philip Kerr, comes along who is repeatedly compared to Raymond Chandler comes along, I can't resist seeing for myself. I'm happy I picked up Berlin Noir and, even if Kerr is not quite Chandler, his stories are so well written that he need not be embarrassed by the comparison.

Berlin Noir consists of three Kerr novels, "March Violets", "The Pale Criminal", and "German Requiem". They each feature Kerr's exquisitely drawn detective Bernie Gunther. If you've read Hammett, Cain, or Chandler, Gunther is instantly recognizable. He's a tough ex-cop now working as a private eye. He's bitter and cynical and sees the corruption all around him. He also has an eye for the ladies as well as a taste for booze. But for all his flaws he lives up to a certain code; he knows the world isn't black and white but he has his own moral compass and lives by it - for the most part.

What distinguishes Gunther from Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe is location. Gunther is a German, and instead of Los Angeles, he makes his base in Berlin. The three stories are set in 1936 (March Violets"), 1938 ("Pale Criminal"), and 1947 (the aptly named "German Requiem") against the backdrop of the rise and fall of Hitler's Nazi Germany. He left the Berlin police once the force became nothing more than a tool of the new regime. The time and setting are perfect for a genre in which shades of grey dominate the palette. Gunther is tasked with solving crimes while navigating the Byzantine-maze of inter-party rivalries, many of which are deadly.

I was fascinated by Gunther and the world Kerry paints for him. I usually take a break in between books that are part of a series but I couldn't do that with the three stories in Berlin Noir. They are all well-crafted and suspenseful. Although Kerr is clearing paying homage to his genre the stories are original and not generic. In other words Kerr is not the literary equivalent of an Elvis-impersonator. He has written these stories within the confines of a genre but has not sacrificed his own voice. The plots are complex but not so complex that they cannot be followed. With each story the personality of Gunther becomes a bit clearer so that by the time the reader is finished with them, Gunther is really a fully-formed and very believable character.

Kerr has just published a new Bernie Gunther novel entitled "The One from the Other". I am about one third of the way through it. It is an excellent sequel made all the more enjoyable by having read "Berlin Noir". Highly recommended. L. Fleisig


The Long Goodbye (To Berlin), 26 Feb 2004
Formulaic Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett rip offs set in pre and post-war Germany. The conception is OK, and a policeman working on a murder case in a society which is itself utterly evil is a fairly interesting idea. But it doesn't work. The Chandler model in particular is shamelessly aped which, as James Ellroy has said elsewhere, is not the way to write detective fiction. You can't copy such a highly stylized technique, certainly not as clumsily as Kerr does. Some of the metaphors will make you wince - and not in the way they are supposed to. Even the hero's world weary cynicism and unlikely ability to cop off with every woman he meets (sixteen year old Hitler Youth girls, movie stars, the ace reporter who helps him out) are copied from Marlowe. Other characters are pretty perfunctory and there's a bit more sex and violence but none of the genius that distinguished the other two. That's fair enough; not everyone can be a Hammett or Chandler, but by following their model so closely Kerr begs the reader to make the comparison and that's when things fall apart.

A delight to read / Un placer a leer, 23 Jun 2008
I am so pleased to have found this book again, I used to own it once before and enjoyed its easy style but I gave it away to a South American friend who was learning English (she loves it!).

This book is so expertly executed that even if you have only a modest level of Spanish, it will strengthen what you've already got, provide you with new words and encourage you onto more.

It's set around 18 stories or myths or folklores from Spain's past, starting with the oldest first and working towards the newest last, with the Spanish and English presented on facing pages.

But each story is introduced by a one paragraph abstract which helps sets the scene for the story that follows. And each of the stories in turn are interesting and engaging in their own right.

Such is my confidence in this book, as well as reordering it, I'm also ordering the Latin American and Mexican versions from the same series at the same time.

If only all parallel books were made like this.


A good book for all stages, 24 Jun 2003
This book is not only a real help in coming to grips with a new language but also useful for those wishing to improve accuracy in written Spanish. Having the English translation next to the Spanish text means that your'e not constantly looking up dictionaries, so you can actually enjoy reading the stories. The stories show the rich cultural and historical side of this vast and interesting country, making the learning process a whole lot more practical too.

Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, 13 Nov 2008
I must say the author has made a good and funny translation of what would have considered harmless children's stories into modern day PC propaganda. What I will say is that it did get a tiny bit repetitive but otherwise it is a good read. Highly recommended for all those who remember the good old days of our children's stories

For everyone not PC repressed, 15 Dec 2007
For any Squaddies or ex-Squaddies who might read this review -

I swamped myself - you have been warned

Funny - or not?, 19 Aug 2007
I found the first two or three amusing - but after that it became just too predictable and, I confess, I never managed to finish it!

Oppression, Alienation, and the Three Little Pigs, 29 Dec 2005
Bedtime stories are probably among the oldest forms of tale-telling there is in human history. Before epic poetry, before political speeches, before religious tales of awe, there were people sitting around campfires and living in caves, caring for their young, speaking soothing sounds to their young.

Bedtime stories were quickly discerned to be an excellent way in which to reinforce not only language skills, but culture and accepted morality, too.

So, why is it that fairy tales, the more-modern equivalent of these stories, became canonised and thus immutable by the likes of the Brothers Grimm, etc.? Just what does Hansel & Gretel or the Little Red Riding Hood mean for us today, beyond being good stories?

And, are they good stories? Should we teach children there are houses made of candy and cookies out in the woods? This is the kind of question addressed in this delightful little collection, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories

Now, before you get your knickers in a twist, realise that this is all in fun, but, as it is fun, highlights certain important points nonetheless. Political correctness can be stretched to the limits of absurdity, like almost anything carried to and beyond its logical limits. That is not to say that political correctness is all bad. But, we do approach a time when nothing can be said for fear of offending someone somewhere at some time.

James Finn Garner highlights this in his introduction, by saying if he has inadvertently displayed any sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, ageist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other type of bias as yet unnamed, he apologizes and encourages your suggestions for rectification.

In this volume, we have the following stories, revised and updated for the modern reader:

- Little Red Riding Hood
- The Emperor's New Clothes
- The Three Little Pigs
- Rumpelstiltskin
- The Three Codependent Goats Gruff
- Rapunzel
- Cinderella
- Goldilocks
- Snow White
- Chicken Little
- The Frog Prince
- Jack and the Beanstalk
- The Pied Piper of Hamlin

I shall recount part of the tale of the Frog Prince below, so you can get a sense of the style of the rest of the stories in this book, which present Little Red Riding Hood teaming up with the wolf against the violence of the hunter, the three pigs living in a harmonious collective, and of course, the frog prince: Once, there was a young princess who, when she grew tired of beating her head against the male power structure at her castle, would relax by walking into the woods and sitting beside a small pond. There she would amuse herself by tossing her favourite golden ball up and down and pondering the role of the eco-feminist in her era.

Well, to cut a not-so-long story even shorter (and to avoid infringements by limiting my take to a fair-use length!), the princess and the frog agree to terms, but when the frog approaches for a kiss, the princess feels harassed; however, she relents, and the frog transforms into a businessman who wants to make the pond into a golf course and condo development... The princess eventually decided that she really didn't need a prince after all, particularly one like this, and turns him back into a frog.

'And while someone might have noticed that the frog was gone, no one ever missed the real estate developer.'

Of course, apologies are due to real estate developers, those who wear tacky golf clothing, and those caught in an inter-species spell.

Fun for children of all adult ages.

BRILLIANTLY FUNNY, 06 Jan 2003
This book is for anyone who likes parodys or mocking the political systems. it is a 'value for money' book,as itwill have you laughing all the time (due to its humorous twists and phrases.) The book is composed of several 're-looks' at popular Fairy-Tales and Nursery Stories. I thoroughly recommend this book for everyone, as although it is based on Fairy Tales; its updated twists,endings and political humor makes it more adult- but keeping it light and not boring.

Perfect., 08 Sep 2008
Just what i was looking for.

Dual alarms, so you dont have to hit the snooze button 5 times before you get out of bed. Both alarms can be set differently [radio comes on at 645, if your still not up, buzzer can go off at 0700] and both are extremely easy to set.
great radio receiver and decent quality sound. glad i bought the right one after searching through amazons selection.

DISPLAY CANNOT BE SEEN IN BRIGHT DAYLIGHT, 06 May 2008
Not a bad clock radio, huge drawback is you cannot see the display during the daytime, both Sony models suffer from this, sending mine back today!!!

Clock radio, 28 Feb 2008
A good clock radio. Dual alarm is handy if you over sleep like i do or if two peolpe need to get up at different times. Large clear display, although quite bright even on the dim setting. I like the automatic time set and reset if there is a power cut, we have several where we live and I work shifts, so not a good combination.
On the whole very pleased with it.

Excellent practice for those wanting reading skills, 17 Feb 2006
I bought this book on the basis of the review by another Amazon reader. He sounded like he was doing what I wanted to do - acquire reading skills. And he is right - this is an excellent reader. There's a wide range of stories and the translations on the opposite page are excellent. There is also an extensive vocabulary at the back and questions so you don't need a dictionary with you. There are brief introductions to each author, in English. It is excellent value for money and the language is sufficiently difficult to challenge anyone with reasonable skills in French but not so difficult as to make the task impossible. My level was just post O level (I didn't do A level but I had done an extra year of conversation). But I haven't touched French for more years than I care to admit. Along with some grammar books, this has really helped to build my confidence and my vocabulary and it hasn't been painful. Many of the books are geared towards children or people wanting conversations skills so I found this a good way to get the skills I wanted. The stories are short and the styles are varied so even if one particular story doesn't appeal to you, you see a different style of expression and the effort is worth it. I wish there were more like it!

Excellent stories in French with English on opposite page, 25 Jul 1998
First read this book in 1960 in college, cost 75 cents. Now relearning French and enjoying the stories, reading first the French and using the opposite page English to check my understanding and translate words and phases I don't know. This is an excellent way to enjoy interesting stories and enlarge one's French painlessly. Ordering a new copy as mine is disintegrating with age (as is the reviewer).

Serial misogynist?, 19 Jun 2008
I'm not a huge fan of detective or crime stories. I've read a few of the modern crop. Starring world weary cops/forensic pathologists/police photographers etc who are so much better than their incompetent colleagues, yet drink like fishes at a curry contest and get off with every woman they meet. John Actor plays Monkfish etc. Yawn. But a detective in Nazi Germany? That sounded interesting: historically intriguing, and ethically too. A policeman floundering in a corrupt society, full of the echoes of history.

Unfortunately, what I found were all the usual clichés, plus a lot worse. Unreal dialogue, plentiful name-dropping: oh yes, and a low ranking detective who talks back to the likes of Heydrich, Himmler, and Göring.

Dialogue is often nonsensical. Like when Bernie agrees with Heydrich not to humiliate Himmler in front of his SS subordinates - and then goes on to do just that. Plot devices are daft too: Bernie begs an armed assassin to shoot him in the head, not the stomach, as it'll save him a lot of pain (and thereby impresses us with Bernie's knowledge of the foibles of certain WWI era firearms). As if the assassin would give a damn. Talk about a crow-bar plot.

Furthermore, there's an unpleasant tendency towards misogyny in these books. They glory in it. Admittedly men are killed in the stories, too. But Kerr seems rather hung up on plotlines involving the graphic torture and mutilation of women. I think it's just a tad sick that all three of these books recycle the same misogynistic theme. But that's just me I guess, eh?

And the final story: German Requiem. A cringe-inducing knock-off of The Third Man (though Kerr seems to be under the impression that it's his work that is the better of the two). Apparently German Requiem is about a `scandal that makes the wartime atrocities pale in comparison'. All I can say is the atrocities committed by both sides during the war were rather more shocking than Kerr's petty storyline.

You want a real feel for history then read Len Deighton's masterful spy series: Game, Set, and Match; Hook, Line and Sinker; and Faith, Hope, and Charity; Winter: A Berlin Family 1899-1945. They positively drip the stuff. History, that is.

And then read Bomber.

Highly recommendable :), 30 Mar 2008
I can highly recommend anyone who is interested in German and European history and want to have a interesting read at the same time.

I am at the same time an amateur expert on the period, and I have not found a single historical or geographical mistake, which is not the case with Alan Fursts "Night Soldiers", which I have also reviewed on this site.

All the Berlin Noir stories should be made into films :))

A German Sam Spade, 16 May 2007
Bernie Gunther is an ex Kripo (German CID) officer working as a private detective in pre and post war Berlin. He is tough, cynical and wisecraking, but also honest and decent. In fact he is Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe transplaned from California to Germany. Bernie's job brings him into contact with historical figures like Himmler, Goering and Artur Nebe, the real life wartime head of the German Kripo.

Philip Kerr is one of those writers who can transplant you into a different world, in this case pre and post war Germany. In doing so he has created a number of slang terms which I do not know if they are real German slang but it does not matter as they sound right.

Berlin Noir contains three out of four Bernie Gunther novels, March Violets, The Pale Criminal and German Requiem. The first of these also concerns the German Rings who Mafia like controlled crime in pre Nazi Berlin. The Rings were destroyed by more violent criminals, the Nazis.

The Pale Criminal has Bernie recruited back into the Berlin Police in order to catch a serial killer who may be linked to the ruling Nazi Party. German Requiem moves to post war Berlin and Vienna with refences to the Third Man.

All three stand up in their own right and Mr Kerr can be congratulated on coming up with a new idea and for being able to create a milleu as well as being able to plot and write very well indeed.

Bernie Gunther is welcome and different addition to the ranks of fictional dectectives

A knight without armor in a savage land, 20 Nov 2006
"A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled." Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was a master at taking a plot and distilling it into a taut, splendid story. Chandler, along with Dashiell Hammett, pretty much invented the "hard-boiled detective". So, when a writer, in this instance Philip Kerr, comes along who is repeatedly compared to Raymond Chandler comes along, I can't resist seeing for myself. I'm happy I picked up Berlin Noir and, even if Kerr is not quite Chandler, his stories are so well written that he need not be embarrassed by the comparison.

Berlin Noir consists of three Kerr novels, "March Violets", "The Pale Criminal", and "German Requiem". They each feature Kerr's exquisitely drawn detective Bernie Gunther. If you've read Hammett, Cain, or Chandler, Gunther is instantly recognizable. He's a tough ex-cop now working as a private eye. He's bitter and cynical and sees the corruption all around him. He also has an eye for the ladies as well as a taste for booze. But for all his flaws he lives up to a certain code; he knows the world isn't black and white but he has his own moral compass and lives by it - for the most part.

What distinguishes Gunther from Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe is location. Gunther is a German, and instead of Los Angeles, he makes his base in Berlin. The three stories are set in 1936 (March Violets"), 1938 ("Pale Criminal"), and 1947 (the aptly named "German Requiem") against the backdrop of the rise and fall of Hitler's Nazi Germany. He left the Berlin police once the force became nothing more than a tool of the new regime. The time and setting are perfect for a genre in which shades of grey dominate the palette. Gunther is tasked with solving crimes while navigating the Byzantine-maze of inter-party rivalries, many of which are deadly.

I was fascinated by Gunther and the world Kerry paints for him. I usually take a break in between books that are part of a series but I couldn't do that with the three stories in Berlin Noir. They are all well-crafted and suspenseful. Although Kerr is clearing paying homage to his genre the stories are original and not generic. In other words Kerr is not the literary equivalent of an Elvis-impersonator. He has written these stories within the confines of a genre but has not sacrificed his own voice. The plots are complex but not so complex that they cannot be followed. With each story the personality of Gunther becomes a bit clearer so that by the time the reader is finished with them, Gunther is really a fully-formed and very believable character.

Kerr has just published a new Bernie Gunther novel entitled "The One from the Other". I am about one third of the way through it. It is an excellent sequel made all the more enjoyable by having read "Berlin Noir". Highly recommended. L. Fleisig


The Long Goodbye (To Berlin), 26 Feb 2004
Formulaic Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett rip offs set in pre and post-war Germany. The conception is OK, and a policeman working on a murder case in a society which is itself utterly evil is a fairly interesting idea. But it doesn't work. The Chandler model in particular is shamelessly aped which, as James Ellroy has said elsewhere, is not the way to write detective fiction. You can't copy such a highly stylized technique, certainly not as clumsily as Kerr does. Some of the metaphors will make you wince - and not in the way they are supposed to. Even the hero's world weary cynicism and unlikely ability to cop off with every woman he meets (sixteen year old Hitler Youth girls, movie stars, the ace reporter who helps him out) are copied from Marlowe. Other characters are pretty perfunctory and there's a bit more sex and violence but none of the genius that distinguished the other two. That's fair enough; not everyone can be a Hammett or Chandler, but by following their model so closely Kerr begs the reader to make the comparison and that's when things fall apart.

A delight to read / Un placer a leer, 23 Jun 2008
I am so pleased to have found this book again, I used to own it once before and enjoyed its easy style but I gave it away to a South American friend who was learning English (she loves it!).

This book is so expertly executed that even if you have only a modest level of Spanish, it will strengthen what you've already got, provide you with new words and encourage you onto more.

It's set around 18 stories or myths or folklores from Spain's past, starting with the oldest first and working towards the newest last, with the Spanish and English presented on facing pages.

But each story is introduced by a one paragraph abstract which helps sets the scene for the story that follows. And each of the stories in turn are interesting and engaging in their own right.

Such is my confidence in this book, as well as reordering it, I'm also ordering the Latin American and Mexican versions from the same series at the same time.

If only all parallel books were made like this.


A good book for all stages, 24 Jun 2003
This book is not only a real help in coming to grips with a new language but also useful for those wishing to improve accuracy in written Spanish. Having the English translation next to the Spanish text means that your'e not constantly looking up dictionaries, so you can actually enjoy reading the stories. The stories show the rich cultural and historical side of this vast and interesting country, making the learning process a whole lot more practical too.

Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, 13 Nov 2008
I must say the author has made a good and funny translation of what would have considered harmless children's stories into modern day PC propaganda. What I will say is that it did get a tiny bit repetitive but otherwise it is a good read. Highly recommended for all those who remember the good old days of our children's stories

For everyone not PC repressed, 15 Dec 2007
For any Squaddies or ex-Squaddies who might read this review -

I swamped myself - you have been warned

Funny - or not?, 19 Aug 2007
I found the first two or three amusing - but after that it became just too predictable and, I confess, I never managed to finish it!

Oppression, Alienation, and the Three Little Pigs, 29 Dec 2005
Bedtime stories are probably among the oldest forms of tale-telling there is in human history. Before epic poetry, before political speeches, before religious tales of awe, there were people sitting around campfires and living in caves, caring for their young, speaking soothing sounds to their young.

Bedtime stories were quickly discerned to be an excellent way in which to reinforce not only language skills, but culture and accepted morality, too.

So, why is it that fairy tales, the more-modern equivalent of these stories, became canonised and thus immutable by the likes of the Brothers Grimm, etc.? Just what does Hansel & Gretel or the Little Red Riding Hood mean for us today, beyond being good stories?

And, are they good stories? Should we teach children there are houses made of candy and cookies out in the woods? This is the kind of question addressed in this delightful little collection, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories

Now, before you get your knickers in a twist, realise that this is all in fun, but, as it is fun, highlights certain important points nonetheless. Political correctness can be stretched to the limits of absurdity, like almost anything carried to and beyond its logical limits. That is not to say that political correctness is all bad. But, we do approach a time when nothing can be said for fear of offending someone somewhere at some time.

James Finn Garner highlights this in his introduction, by saying if he has inadvertently displayed any sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, ageist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other type of bias as yet unnamed, he apologizes and encourages your suggestions for rectification.

In this volume, we have the following stories, revised and updated for the modern reader:

- Little Red Riding Hood
- The Emperor's New Clothes
- The Three Little Pigs
- Rumpelstiltskin
- The Three Codependent Goats Gruff
- Rapunzel
- Cinderella
- Goldilocks
- Snow White
- Chicken Little
- The Frog Prince
- Jack and the Beanstalk
- The Pied Piper of Hamlin

I shall recount part of the tale of the Frog Prince below, so you can get a sense of the style of the rest of the stories in this book, which present Little Red Riding Hood teaming up with the wolf against the violence of the hunter, the three pigs living in a harmonious collective, and of course, the frog prince: Once, there was a young princess who, when she grew tired of beating her head against the male power structure at her castle, would relax by walking into the woods and sitting beside a small pond. There she would amuse herself by tossing her favourite golden ball up and down and pondering the role of the eco-feminist in her era.

Well, to cut a not-so-long story even shorter (and to avoid infringements by limiting my take to a fair-use length!), the princess and the frog agree to terms, but when the frog approaches for a kiss, the princess feels harassed; however, she relents, and the frog transforms into a businessman who wants to make the pond into a golf course and condo development... The princess eventually decided that she really didn't need a prince after all, particularly one like this, and turns him back into a frog.

'And while someone might have noticed that the frog was gone, no one ever missed the real estate developer.'

Of course, apologies are due to real estate developers, those who wear tacky golf clothing, and those caught in an inter-species spell.

Fun for children of all adult ages.

BRILLIANTLY FUNNY, 06 Jan 2003
This book is for anyone who likes parodys or mocking the political systems. it is a 'value for money' book,as itwill have you laughing all the time (due to its humorous twists and phrases.) The book is composed of several 're-looks' at popular Fairy-Tales and Nursery Stories. I thoroughly recommend this book for everyone, as although it is based on Fairy Tales; its updated twists,endings and political humor makes it more adult- but keeping it light and not boring.

Gripping stuff , 26 Sep 2008
This is a re-read. It is a very good adventure, one of his best, maintaining a real sense of threat and suffocating claustrophobia under the ground. There are some internal inconsistencies in dates and timings which would probably not get past a modern editor. Good stuff.

short but not sweet, 06 Jul 2008
Axel Lindenbrock's uncle, Professor Otto Lindenbrock, has found a piece of paper written in Old Icelandic. Axel shortly manages to make sense of it, and it leads him and his uncle to Iceland to an extinct volcano called Sneffells. There, they go down into its crater with the help of an escort named Hans Bjelke, in hope to get to the centre of the earth! They will face hunger, thirst, and tiredness, but odd Professor Lindenbrock will not give up until he is at the earth's core...or until he is dead!

This is not the whole story but only a shortened version that takes only about 40 minutes to read if you do not want to read the whole story or you want to tell a friend about the book.

Great book, Wrong description!, 03 Jul 2008
The book is fantastic, and if a real review is wanted, then read one of the other ones. I'm just here to say that the book is not hardcover as it states in the product description, and is one of those crappy recycled green covers!

Deserved classic- science fiction with character, 21 Oct 2007
As well as being the gripping high-adventure story that other reviewers have written about, when I re-read this novel recently I was struck by another side to the story that I hadn't noticed before- it reads, especially at the beginning of the book, as a satire. Verne is not content with helping to invent science fiction in terms of the science- some of which is consciously out-of-date even as Verne writes it, as he explains away science facts such as why inside the Earth's core is not flesh-meltingly hot in a manner not dissimilar to those bits of Star Trek where they tell you how the teleport works. In addition to the science, Journey To The Centre Of The Earth has character. Verne invents in this story the very concept of the mad scientist, in this case Professor Lidenbrock, who struggles to teach coherently at a German university and who is sent on a wild goose chase to Iceland because of one scrap of paper found in a library book. The interplay between our narrator Axel, his mad professor uncle and the reliable but non-verbal Icelandic guide Hans has things to say about the self-importance of science as well as about class and social standing. The science of this book is horrendously flawed but I believe it's the strength of character as well as Verne's fantastically imagined underground worlds that makes this novel not an out-dated joke but deservedly a classic.

4 stars, 05 Jul 2007
Verne captures real drama and human response in this fictitious masterpiece.It's a book for those who like the somewhat sureal adventure story. The plot thickens as the book progresses and i've read it twice in very different circumstances leading me to give it 4 stars. Firstly i read it one summer holiday in one big reading session as i really couldn't put it down, it was magic. The second time i read it on the bus on the way to work and found that having to read it on and off i didn't enjoyit nearly as much and found it hard to get back into. Not a book to read on and off from night to night in bed even but great if you've got a few hours to kill and you want to make the very mos of them.great book.

Perfect., 08 Sep 2008
Just what i was looking for.

Dual alarms, so you dont have to hit the snooze button 5 times before you get out of bed. Both alarms can be set differently [radio comes on at 645, if your still not up, buzzer can go off at 0700] and both are extremely easy to set.
great radio receiver and decent quality sound. glad i bought the right one after searching through amazons selection.

DISPLAY CANNOT BE SEEN IN BRIGHT DAYLIGHT, 06 May 2008
Not a bad clock radio, huge drawback is you cannot see the display during the daytime, both Sony models suffer from this, sending mine back today!!!

Clock radio, 28 Feb 2008
A good clock radio. Dual alarm is handy if you over sleep like i do or if two peolpe need to get up at different times. Large clear display, although quite bright even on the dim setting. I like the automatic time set and reset if there is a power cut, we have several where we live and I work shifts, so not a good combination.
On the whole very pleased with it.

Excellent practice for those wanting reading skills, 17 Feb 2006
I bought this book on the basis of the review by another Amazon reader. He sounded like he was doing what I wanted to do - acquire reading skills. And he is right - this is an excellent reader. There's a wide range of stories and the translations on the opposite page are excellent. There is also an extensive vocabulary at the back and questions so you don't need a dictionary with you. There are brief introductions to each author, in English. It is excellent value for money and the language is sufficiently difficult to challenge anyone with reasonable skills in French but not so difficult as to make the task impossible. My level was just post O level (I didn't do A level but I had done an extra year of conversation). But I haven't touched French for more years than I care to admit. Along with some grammar books, this has really helped to build my confidence and my vocabulary and it hasn't been painful. Many of the books are geared towards children or people wanting conversations skills so I found this a good way to get the skills I wanted. The stories are short and the styles are varied so even if one particular story doesn't appeal to you, you see a different style of expression and the effort is worth it. I wish there were more like it!

Excellent stories in French with English on opposite page, 25 Jul 1998
First read this book in 1960 in college, cost 75 cents. Now relearning French and enjoying the stories, reading first the French and using the opposite page English to check my understanding and translate words and phases I don't know. This is an excellent way to enjoy interesting stories and enlarge one's French painlessly. Ordering a new copy as mine is disintegrating with age (as is the reviewer).

Serial misogynist?, 19 Jun 2008
I'm not a huge fan of detective or crime stories. I've read a few of the modern crop. Starring world weary cops/forensic pathologists/police photographers etc who are so much better than their incompetent colleagues, yet drink like fishes at a curry contest and get off with every woman they meet. John Actor plays Monkfish etc. Yawn. But a detective in Nazi Germany? That sounded interesting: historically intriguing, and ethically too. A policeman floundering in a corrupt society, full of the echoes of history.

Unfortunately, what I found were all the usual clichés, plus a lot worse. Unreal dialogue, plentiful name-dropping: oh yes, and a low ranking detective who talks back to the likes of Heydrich, Himmler, and Göring.

Dialogue is often nonsensical. Like when Bernie agrees with Heydrich not to humiliate Himmler in front of his SS subordinates - and then goes on to do just that. Plot devices are daft too: Bernie begs an armed assassin to shoot him in the head, not the stomach, as it'll save him a lot of pain (and thereby impresses us with Bernie's knowledge of the foibles of certain WWI era firearms). As if the assassin would give a damn. Talk about a crow-bar plot.

Furthermore, there's an unpleasant tendency towards misogyny in these books. They glory in it. Admittedly men are killed in the stories, too. But Kerr seems rather hung up on plotlines involving the graphic torture and mutilation of women. I think it's just a tad sick that all three of these books recycle the same misogynistic theme. But that's just me I guess, eh?

And the final story: German Requiem. A cringe-inducing knock-off of The Third Man (though Kerr seems to be under the impression that it's his work that is the better of the two). Apparently German Requiem is about a `scandal that makes the wartime atrocities pale in comparison'. All I can say is the atrocities committed by both sides during the war were rather more shocking than Kerr's petty storyline.

You want a real feel for history then read Len Deighton's masterful spy series: Game, Set, and Match; Hook, Line and Sinker; and Faith, Hope, and Charity; Winter: A Berlin Family 1899-1945. They positively drip the stuff. History, that is.

And then read Bomber.

Highly recommendable :), 30 Mar 2008
I can highly recommend anyone who is interested in German and European history and want to have a interesting read at the same time.

I am at the same time an amateur expert on the period, and I have not found a single historical or geographical mistake, which is not the case with Alan Fursts "Night Soldiers", which I have also reviewed on this site.

All the Berlin Noir stories should be made into films :))

A German Sam Spade, 16 May 2007
Bernie Gunther is an ex Kripo (German CID) officer working as a private detective in pre and post war Berlin. He is tough, cynical and wisecraking, but also honest and decent. In fact he is Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe transplaned from California to Germany. Bernie's job brings him into contact with historical figures like Himmler, Goering and Artur Nebe, the real life wartime head of the German Kripo.

Philip Kerr is one of those writers who can transplant you into a different world, in this case pre and post war Germany. In doing so he has created a number of slang terms which I do not know if they are real German slang but it does not matter as they sound right.

Berlin Noir contains three out of four Bernie Gunther novels, March Violets, The Pale Criminal and German Requiem. The first of these also concerns the German Rings who Mafia like controlled crime in pre Nazi Berlin. The Rings were destroyed by more violent criminals, the Nazis.

The Pale Criminal has Bernie recruited back into the Berlin Police in order to catch a serial killer who may be linked to the ruling Nazi Party. German Requiem moves to post war Berlin and Vienna with refences to the Third Man.

All three stand up in their own right and Mr Kerr can be congratulated on coming up with a new idea and for being able to create a milleu as well as being able to plot and write very well indeed.

Bernie Gunther is welcome and different addition to the ranks of fictional dectectives

A knight without armor in a savage land, 20 Nov 2006
"A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled." Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was a master at taking a plot and distilling it into a taut, splendid story. Chandler, along with Dashiell Hammett, pretty much invented the "hard-boiled detective". So, when a writer, in this instance Philip Kerr, comes along who is repeatedly compared to Raymond Chandler comes along, I can't resist seeing for myself. I'm happy I picked up Berlin Noir and, even if Kerr is not quite Chandler, his stories are so well written that he need not be embarrassed by the comparison.

Berlin Noir consists of three Kerr novels, "March Violets", "The Pale Criminal", and "German Requiem". They each feature Kerr's exquisitely drawn detective Bernie Gunther. If you've read Hammett, Cain, or Chandler, Gunther is instantly recognizable. He's a tough ex-cop now working as a private eye. He's bitter and cynical and sees the corruption all around him. He also has an eye for the ladies as well as a taste for booze. But for all his flaws he lives up to a certain code; he knows the world isn't black and white but he has his own moral compass and lives by it - for the most part.

What distinguishes Gunther from Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe is location. Gunther is a German, and instead of Los Angeles, he makes his base in Berlin. The three stories are set in 1936 (March Violets"), 1938 ("Pale Criminal"), and 1947 (the aptly named "German Requiem") against the backdrop of the rise and fall of Hitler's Nazi Germany. He left the Berlin police once the force became nothing more than a tool of the new regime. The time and setting are perfect for a genre in which shades of grey dominate the palette. Gunther is tasked with solving crimes while navigating the Byzantine-maze of inter-party rivalries, many of which are deadly.

I was fascinated by Gunther and the world Kerry paints for him. I usually take a break in between books that are part of a series but I couldn't do that with the three stories in Berlin Noir. They are all well-crafted and suspenseful. Although Kerr is clearing paying homage to his genre the stories are original and not generic. In other words Kerr is not the literary equivalent of an Elvis-impersonator. He has written these stories within the confines of a genre but has not sacrificed his own voice. The plots are complex but not so complex that they cannot be followed. With each story the personality of Gunther becomes a bit clearer so that by the time the reader is finished with them, Gunther is really a fully-formed and very believable character.

Kerr has just published a new Bernie Gunther novel entitled "The One from the Other". I am about one third of the way through it. It is an excellent sequel made all the more enjoyable by having read "Berlin Noir". Highly recommended. L. Fleisig


The Long Goodbye (To Berlin), 26 Feb 2004
Formulaic Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett rip offs set in pre and post-war Germany. The conception is OK, and a policeman working on a murder case in a society which is itself utterly evil is a fairly interesting idea. But it doesn't work. The Chandler model in particular is shamelessly aped which, as James Ellroy has said elsewhere, is not the way to write detective fiction. You can't copy such a highly stylized technique, certainly not as clumsily as Kerr does. Some of the metaphors will make you wince - and not in the way they are supposed to. Even the hero's world weary cynicism and unlikely ability to cop off with every woman he meets (sixteen year old Hitler Youth girls, movie stars, the ace reporter who helps him out) are copied from Marlowe. Other characters are pretty perfunctory and there's a bit more sex and violence but none of the genius that distinguished the other two. That's fair enough; not everyone can be a Hammett or Chandler, but by following their model so closely Kerr begs the reader to make the comparison and that's when things fall apart.

A delight to read / Un placer a leer, 23 Jun 2008
I am so pleased to have found this book again, I used to own it once before and enjoyed its easy style but I gave it away to a South American friend who was learning English (she loves it!).

This book is so expertly executed that even if you have only a modest level of Spanish, it will strengthen what you've already got, provide you with new words and encourage you onto more.

It's set around 18 stories or myths or folklores from Spain's past, starting with the oldest first and working towards the newest last, with the Spanish and English presented on facing pages.

But each story is introduced by a one paragraph abstract which helps sets the scene for the story that follows. And each of the stories in turn are interesting and engaging in their own right.

Such is my confidence in this book, as well as reordering it, I'm also ordering the Latin American and Mexican versions from the same series at the same time.

If only all parallel books were made like this.


A good book for all stages, 24 Jun 2003
This book is not only a real help in coming to grips with a new language but also useful for those wishing to improve accuracy in written Spanish. Having the English translation next to the Spanish text means that your'e not constantly looking up dictionaries, so you can actually enjoy reading the stories. The stories show the rich cultural and historical side of this vast and interesting country, making the learning process a whole lot more practical too.

Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, 13 Nov 2008
I must say the author has made a good and funny translation of what would have considered harmless children's stories into modern day PC propaganda. What I will say is that it did get a tiny bit repetitive but otherwise it is a good read. Highly recommended for all those who remember the good old days of our children's stories

For everyone not PC repressed, 15 Dec 2007
For any Squaddies or ex-Squaddies who might read this review -

I swamped myself - you have been warned

Funny - or not?, 19 Aug 2007
I found the first two or three amusing - but after that it became just too predictable and, I confess, I never managed to finish it!

Oppression, Alienation, and the Three Little Pigs, 29 Dec 2005
Bedtime stories are probably among the oldest forms of tale-telling there is in human history. Before epic poetry, before political speeches, before religious tales of awe, there were people sitting around campfires and living in caves, caring for their young, speaking soothing sounds to their young.

Bedtime stories were quickly discerned to be an excellent way in which to reinforce not only language skills, but culture and accepted morality, too.

So, why is it that fairy tales, the more-modern equivalent of these stories, became canonised and thus immutable by the likes of the Brothers Grimm, etc.? Just what does Hansel & Gretel or the Little Red Riding Hood mean for us today, beyond being good stories?

And, are they good stories? Should we teach children there are houses made of candy and cookies out in the woods? This is the kind of question addressed in this delightful little collection, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories

Now, before you get your knickers in a twist, realise that this is all in fun, but, as it is fun, highlights certain important points nonetheless. Political correctness can be stretched to the limits of absurdity, like almost anything carried to and beyond its logical limits. That is not to say that political correctness is all bad. But, we do approach a time when nothing can be said for fear of offending someone somewhere at some time.

James Finn Garner highlights this in his introduction, by saying if he has inadvertently displayed any sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, ageist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other type of bias as yet unnamed, he apologizes and encourages your suggestions for rectification.

In this volume, we have the following stories, revised and updated for the modern reader:

- Little Red Riding Hood
- The Emperor's New Clothes
- The Three Little Pigs
- Rumpelstiltskin
- The Three Codependent Goats Gruff
- Rapunzel
- Cinderella
- Goldilocks
- Snow White
- Chicken Little
- The Frog Prince
- Jack and the Beanstalk
- The Pied Piper of Hamlin

I shall recount part of the tale of the Frog Prince below, so you can get a sense of the style of the rest of the stories in this book, which present Little Red Riding Hood teaming up with the wolf against the violence of the hunter, the three pigs living in a harmonious collective, and of course, the frog prince: Once, there was a young princess who, when she grew tired of beating her head against the male power structure at her castle, would relax by walking into the woods and sitting beside a small pond. There she would amuse herself by tossing her favourite golden ball up and down and pondering the role of the eco-feminist in her era.

Well, to cut a not-so-long story even shorter (and to avoid infringements by limiting my take to a fair-use length!), the princess and the frog agree to terms, but when the frog approaches for a kiss, the princess feels harassed; however, she relents, and the frog transforms into a businessman who wants to make the pond into a golf course and condo development... The princess eventually decided that she really didn't need a prince after all, particularly one like this, and turns him back into a frog.

'And while someone might have noticed that the frog was gone, no one ever missed the real estate developer.'

Of course, apologies are due to real estate developers, those who wear tacky golf clothing, and those caught in an inter-species spell.

Fun for children of all adult ages.

BRILLIANTLY FUNNY, 06 Jan 2003
This book is for anyone who likes parodys or mocking the political systems. it is a 'value for money' book,as itwill have you laughing all the time (due to its humorous twists and phrases.) The book is composed of several 're-looks' at popular Fairy-Tales and Nursery Stories. I thoroughly recommend this book for everyone, as although it is based on Fairy Tales; its updated twists,endings and political humor makes it more adult- but keeping it light and not boring.

Gripping stuff , 26 Sep 2008
This is a re-read. It is a very good adventure, one of his best, maintaining a real sense of threat and suffocating claustrophobia under the ground. There are some internal inconsistencies in dates and timings which would probably not get past a modern editor. Good stuff.

short but not sweet, 06 Jul 2008
Axel Lindenbrock's uncle, Professor Otto Lindenbrock, has found a piece of paper written in Old Icelandic. Axel shortly manages to make sense of it, and it leads him and his uncle to Iceland to an extinct volcano called Sneffells. There, they go down into its crater with the help of an escort named Hans Bjelke, in hope to get to the centre of the earth! They will face hunger, thirst, and tiredness, but odd Professor Lindenbrock will not give up until he is at the earth's core...or until he is dead!

This is not the whole story but only a shortened version that takes only about 40 minutes to read if you do not want to read the whole story or you want to tell a friend about the book.

Great book, Wrong description!, 03 Jul 2008
The book is fantastic, and if a real review is wanted, then read one of the other ones. I'm just here to say that the book is not hardcover as it states in the product description, and is one of those crappy recycled green covers!

Deserved classic- science fiction with character, 21 Oct 2007
As well as being the gripping high-adventure story that other reviewers have written about, when I re-read this novel recently I was struck by another side to the story that I hadn't noticed before- it reads, especially at the beginning of the book, as a satire. Verne is not content with helping to invent science fiction in terms of the science- some of which is consciously out-of-date even as Verne writes it, as he explains away science facts such as why inside the Earth's core is not flesh-meltingly hot in a manner not dissimilar to those bits of Star Trek where they tell you how the teleport works. In addition to the science, Journey To The Centre Of The Earth has character. Verne invents in this story the very concept of the mad scientist, in this case Professor Lidenbrock, who struggles to teach coherently at a German university and who is sent on a wild goose chase to Iceland because of one scrap of paper found in a library book. The interplay between our narrator Axel, his mad professor uncle and the reliable but non-verbal Icelandic guide Hans has things to say about the self-importance of science as well as about class and social standing. The science of this book is horrendously flawed but I believe it's the strength of character as well as Verne's fantastically imagined underground worlds that makes this novel not an out-dated joke but deservedly a classic.

4 stars, 05 Jul 2007
Verne captures real drama and human response in this fictitious masterpiece.It's a book for those who like the somewhat sureal adventure story. The plot thickens as the book progresses and i've read it twice in very different circumstances leading me to give it 4 stars. Firstly i read it one summer holiday in one big reading session as i really couldn't put it down, it was magic. The second time i read it on the bus on the way to work and found that having to read it on and off i didn't enjoyit nearly as much and found it hard to get back into. Not a book to read on and off from night to night in bed even but great if you've got a few hours to kill and you want to make the very mos of them.great book.

a quick language boost, 21 Oct 2006
Not having learnt french since school (GCSE/GCE) I found the stories easy enough to get the general story line but complex enough to challenge and revise my knowledge of the language - and extend it. The parallel text is just fantastic you don't lose interest constantly having to look words up in a dictionary. Would strongly recomend this book for intermediates.

Interesting selection of varying levels of difficulty, 30 Aug 2006
This isn't a book for beginners. My French is post O level and taken more years ago than I intend to disclose. I started re-learning it by teaching myself 10 months ago. I can now read most of these stories using the parallel text to check my understanding and to argue with the translations - yes I'm that confident now. For some stories I needed more help than others... 'Apprendre à vie' and 'David' gave me no trouble at all but 'Tous Feux Éteints' was a struggle. I enjoy the fact that some stories are easy and others are difficult because I'm trying now to get used to different styles and pick up vocabulary so this collection of stories has really appealed to me. I love the parallel texts because I don't need a dictionary and I can use the translation for reassurance and as I say to argue with. I really recommend these short stories - I have several parallel texts and am always looking out for more. But this isn't for beginners - you do need a reasonable reading age in French - I think mine is about 12 or 13! So most of the time I know what's going on but complex structures and vocabulary do still confuse me. If you want to increase vocabulary and immerse yourself in the culture then these short stories are ideal. I love to read them on the train because I don't have to juggle with a dictionary and the prices are very good. Yes, I recommend this collection. Ahhh some extra words - there are no exercises with this selection and no vocabulary list - some parallel texts do have those. But this does have a very good introduction. As the editor hints at the denouements on some of the stories I would advise reading it *after* you've read the stories! There are twelve in all and of varying lengths... `David' is very long but some of the stories are just a few pages. I repeat - this isn't for beginners... you need to have studied to the equivalent of GCSE or O level to be able to cope with these. But they really are an enjoyable and varied collection. Actually, they're worth reading in English but the translation lacks that je ne sais quoi! ;->

French short stories, 10 Sep 2004
The stories are very varied, interesting, rich and, in some cases, moving. But unless the reader is at an advanced level they are quite difficult to read and are "heavy going". So the book's description that it is suitable for students of French at all levels is misleading. For me it will be a long time before I can easily read it and that is if I don't sell it beforehand.

A must for a-level, degree or pleasure!, 07 May 2003
The parallel text is fantastic for all those who want to practise tranlation of "unseens", for a-level or degree level. I've certainly found this book invaluabe for both these purposes! However, this book is also great if you just want to read some short modern French language works, and is accessible to all levels from lower-intermediate and up. My particular favourite is "David", which is so beautifully and bizarrely French. If you just want to practise unseens (and take photocopies, or scrawl on your text), the spacing and size of text is not ideal, the font is a little small and double line spacing would make life a lot easier. Other than that, a really good book for most levels and good value for money too (which is very important for impoverishe