February 22, 1956

Philip Kerr, (February 22, 1956 to March 23,  2018) wrote books; his adventures were popular. Kerr could put the cat in action, and often did. This is just an example:

"The lynx crept toward the top of the stairs, crouched down as if preparing to spring and then growled again; only this time, the cat showed her its teeth and its claws as if to remind her that it was strong enough to bring down a fully grown deer, which was its normal prey. Kalinka lifted the extinguisher and prepared to hit the plunger, but since it was full of water, it took all of her strength to aim the nozzle at the cat. ..."

This scene is from his 2014 The Winter Horses.

He ranked an obituary in the Guardian (of course they are very good at that) and so we learn:

'Born in Edinburgh, Philip was the son of William Kerr, a building planner, and his wife, Ann (nee Brodie). His parents had converted from the Free Church of Scotland to the evangelical Baptist church, deeming it more “family-friendly”.

'It was not an easy fit for a boy with an aversion to water. “I could not swim or even bear to have my head under water and consequently the spectacle of full immersion baptism – and by extension, the very idea of washing away the sin that was required to make my peace with Jesus – was horrifying to me,” he later wrote....

'Though he had wanted to study English at Birmingham University, Kerr bowed to paternal pressure and took up law. After a year in a kibbutz, Kerr returned to Birmingham for a postgraduate degree in jurisprudence.

'After he left law, work as an advertising copywriter included a spell at Saatchi and Saatchi – though he had a tendency to get fired. While colleagues enjoyed boozy lunches, he preferred to be in the London Library, where he worked on five unpublished “sub-Martin Amis” novels until turning to crime in March Violets....

'Berlin held a great fascination for the author Philip Kerr,...it was a place where the impact of evil upon essentially decent people was felt especially keenly. His morally ambiguous fictional private detective Bernie Gunther first appeared in March Violets (1989), set in the city in 1936, after the Nazis’ rise to power, and the first of his Berlin Noir trilogy. ...

'A German Requiem (1991) ended the trilogy by taking events to the end of the second world war and Vienna, but the lure of his protagonist and Berlin, which proves as much a character as its citizens, remained strong. The One from the Other (2006) was the first in a run of 10 more Berlin Noir novels. If the Dead Rise Not (2009) won the Ellis Peters Historic Crime award...

'In the intervening years, Kerr produced standalone books, starting with the ambitious A Philosophical Investigation (1992), which married cyber-punk crime with the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. A complex and demanding tale of a serial killer, it led to him being listed alongside Iain Banks and AL Kennedy as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists under 40. But critical acclaim was not matched by sales. His commercial breakthrough arrived only in 1995 with Gridiron, a Towering Inferno-style action story...

'By the time Gridiron was published he was married to the journalist and author Jane Thynne, whom he had met while he was working as a gossip columnist on the London Evening Standard, and with whom he had three children...

'His commitment to research led him into dangerous situations, sometimes in the seamier areas of Berlin, or as when travelling with the St Petersburg police for Dead Meat (1993), his thriller set among the Russian mafia. One particularly frightening day ended with the discovery of holes in the flak jacket he had been wearing. They marked where the previous wearer had been shot...'

His books included The Penguin Book of Lies (1991) and The Penguin Book of Fights, Feuds and Heartfelt Hatreds: An Anthology of Antipathy. (1992)

Philip Kerr was popular and prolific.