When a favourite author puts out a bad novel it’s relatively easy to cut some slack and simply look forward to the next one. But what to think when having enjoyed a particular series, you don’t rate any of the writer’s other books? I suspect this is where I’m getting to with Philip Kerr.

Eighteen years from his debut and it seems PK is bookending his career with the rather excellent Berlin Noir series. The first of these, March Violets, Pale Criminal and German Requiem were published between 1990 and 1993 and trace the crime solving career of Berlin detective, Bernie Gunther. The first two take place in 1936 and 1938 and the last in 1947, i.e. none are set during the War itself. In 2006 Bernie Gunther returned in The One From the Other and again this year in A Quiet Flame. This time the action takes place during the ignominious defeat and on the run in South America years. These too are terrific and the series as a whole is several leagues above other similar ones, and I recommend it without hesitation. It’s Kerr’s in between years output that bothers me.

Having tasted minor success with Berlin Noir, he went after the big time. One attempt at producing a huge airport thriller followed another, each doing pretty well but each subject to the law of diminishing returns. Worse, each tried to cash in on a popular trend of the day, so we get yet another Kennedy conspiracy thriller and a couple of lame cyber thrillers. I suppose we should be thankful Dan Brown wasn’t around at the time.

Hitler’s Peace, a Jack Higgins, Robert Harris, Tom Clancy, blokes own, derring-do thriller, is the last of these potboilers before Kerr returned to Berlin Noir. I’m not sure if this return was with tail tucked between legs, or, being more charitable, perhaps Hitler’s Peace reignited the Berlin Noir flame. If so then Hitler’s Peace has something going for it – other than that it is a mildly enjoyable but otherwise utterly predictable and anonymous book.

There is no need to dwell on the story which is a relatively standard-issue “what if?” scenario, centred on high-level intrigue between the British, Americans, Germans, and Russians in the run up to the Teheran Conference in 1943. Apart from its predictability, what really pulls Hitler’s Peace back is the hamfisted attempt to create a convincing world. No detail is too small, no brand too superfluous, no Nazi too trivial not to be shoehorned into the the action. This book drowns under the sheer weight of 1940s nomenclature be it cigarette brands, army units, popular songs or aeroplane variations – all of which require a supplementary line of descriptive exposition. Can this be the same writer who so effortlessly created much the same world in the Berlin Noir books?

Then there’s the people. Anyone who was anyone in the Nazi hierarchy or in London in 1943 finds themselves called to the fore, passed in a garden or stairwell or simply met at a party. When he meets intelligence officers, it has to be Philby and Burgess, when he works with a Colonel, it has to be Enoch Powell and so on through Hitler, Himmler, Roosevelt, Churchill, Beria, Stalin, all manner of real-life ranking Nazis, the Cambridge spy circle, the Mitfords, US diplomats – even Evelyn bloody Waugh. To be fair, I think he did omit Ernest Hemingway, Monty, Alan Turing, Barnes Wallis and Vera Lynn. On the other hand, if they knew they might be miffed, as every other bugger gets a mention.

Hitler’s Peace is nowhere near as good as Alan Furst or John Lawton and, next rung down, completely missed the Robert Harris boat. This is squarely in Michael Dobbs hack territory. Which is a real shame as all five Berlin Noir novels are first rate thrillers. So is the anomaly the bad books or the good ones? For me Hitler’s Peace is one bad book too far and I suspect my Phillip Kerr reading will be strictly Bernie Gunther from now on.

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