Jennifer Palmer has read crime fiction since her teenage years & enjoys reviewing within the many sub-genres that now exist; as a historian who lectures on real life historical mysteries she particularly appreciates historical cime fiction.
Originally published in 2007, this unusual German police procedural thriller finally comes to British shores in an English translation. It features 44 year-old Louise Boni of the Freiburg Serious Crime Squad (Kripo).
The narrative commences with an intriguing prologue. A man approaches the Niemann house through the back garden and threatens the householder with a gun. The intruder then leaves but returns that night, entering the house and mysteriously ordering the family (the occupants), to leave his house within seven days; reciting a fragment of religious verse.
Louise Boni and her police team are tasked to locate this mystery-man and his motive in threatening the Niemann family. Louise is a recovering alcoholic who has led two previous investigations described in Zen and the Art of Murder and A Summer of Murder. This latest novel is therefore, subtitled A Black Forest Investigation: III
Detective Louise Boni often has hunches about her investigations, her cases. She and her colleagues have learnt to respect these very vague instincts. She ponders deeply about this unusual case, one featuring a mystery-man. She realises that they are dealing with someone who is not operating to conventional police thinking (as a perpetrator), so a consideration of “the techniques of asymmetrical warfare,” may be required.
The man could be a “re-settler”: a German who has returned to the Fatherland, following the break-up of the former Soviet Union. Such individuals were second-class citizens in the USSR and eastern bloc; and are now treated with the same lowly status in the newly unified Germany. Eventually the possibilities widen to suggest linkages to the Yugoslavian-German border, or a man displaced from the Balkans – a man scarred by war and haunted by identity.
The tension ratchets up as Louise tries to forestall further attacks on the Neumann family.
The tale turns bleak, with the importance of the war in Serbia growing in significance. Louise with all her flaws makes an appealing protagonist who fights her way through the hardships of her personal as well as police life.
It contrasts markedly against the British police procedural, as the story-line continues after what might have been considered a denouement.
It is however a harsh and haunting story.
Editorial Note: Translated from German by Jamie Bulloch
