Munich, in the late thirties, the first years of fascism - the last
before the war: Kathie is desperate to leave her sheltered village life
and sets out for the city, determined that she'll get by, one way or
another. She is dark-haired, buxom and pretty, like the women who
recently disappeared without a trace. Young women are being found
around Munich, abused and murdered. Josef Kalteis has been arrested, but
is he really responsible for all those misdeeds? Did they execute the
wrong one while the murderer is still on the loose? Spellbound by
the magnetizing story of the dead women, the reader follows young
Kathie. Somewhere in between her naive search for luck and existential
concerns, occasional prostitution and the desire for true love, she is
in grave danger. Andrea Maria Schenkel has again created a novel
based on real events, in which the story is told through several voices
and documentation, including interrogation logs, witness statements and
the dark thoughts within the murderer's mind. Views: 57
Was this a robbery gone wrong? Is he Hans returned for revenge? Is
she even the victim at all?
Bundled into a car, tied up and taken in darkness to an old mill
in the thick of a forest, she has been flung into a bunker. It is only
now, as time passes and she sees her attacker in the light, that she
notices the startling resemblance to someone from her very dark and
buried past, someone she never wanted to see again.<
It had been a normal day at work. Monika was locking up, ready to
head home, when the man arrived. She didnt even see his fist until it
was far too late. Views: 39
Bavaria, Germany, 1947.At the end of the war, Afra Zauner returns to her parents' cottage on the edge of Mauther Forest. Unmarried, and pregnant. As she struggles to raise her child, her father's shame, her mother's fury and the loud whispers of the neighbours begin to weigh upon her. She doesn't believe in her sin. But everyone else does.And someone brings judgement down upon her.Many years later, Hermann Müller is throwing a drunk out of his tavern. A traveller, who won't stop ranting about a murder left unsolved, about police who never investigated. Out of curiousity, the file is reopened. And in the cold light of hindsight, a chilling realisation creeps upon the community.No-one ever atoned for Afra's death. But her story is waiting to be told.Andrea Maria Schenkel returns to the form of her groundbreaking The Murder Farm, narrating through suspects, victims and investigators to lead the reader to their own awful understanding. Views: 36
The Times Literary Supplement said of The Murder Farm, "With only a limited number of ways in which violent death can be investigated, crime writers have to use considerable ingenuity to bring anything fresh to the genre. Andrea Maria Schenkel has done it in her first novel." The first author to achieve a consecutive win of the German Crime Prize, Schenkel has won first place for both The Murder Farm and Ice Cold. The Murder Farm begins with a shock: a whole family has been murdered with a pickaxe. They were old Danner the farmer, an overbearing patriarch; his put-upon devoutly religious wife; and their daughter Barbara Spangler, whose husband Vincenz left her after fathering her daughter little Marianne. She also had a son, two-year-old Josef, the result of her affair with local farmer Georg Hauer after his wife's death from cancer. Hauer himself claimed paternity. Also murdered was the Danners' maidservant, Marie. ... Views: 11
