Title Page

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE PALE CRIMINAL

Philip Kerr was born in Edinburgh in 1956 and lives in London. As a journalist he has written for a number of newspapers and magazines, including The Sunday Times and The Statesman. He is the author of the novels March Violets, The Pale Criminal, and A German Requiem (published together as Berlin Noir). He is also the author of Hitler’s Peace, A Philosophical Investigation, Dead Meat, Gridiron, Esau, A Five-Year Plan, The Shot, The Second Angel, and Dark Matter, and he has edited The Penguin Book of Lies and The Penguin Book of Fights, Feuds, and Heartfelt Hatreds.

Copyright Page

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in Great Britain by Viking 1990
First published in the United States of America by Penguin Books 2005

Copyright © Philip Kerr, 1990

ISBN : 978-1-101-57593-2

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Dedication

To Jane

Much about your good people moves me to disgust, and it is not their evil I mean. How I wish they possessed a madness through which they could perish, like this pale criminal. Truly I wish their madness were called truth or loyalty or justice: but they possess their virtue in order to live long and in a miserable ease.

Nietzsche

PART ONE

PART ONE

You tend to notice the strawberry tart in Kranzler’s Café a lot more when your diet forbids you to have any.