Bad family ties

Silvia ChuiSociety Editor

Of course there is no ideal world in a crime novel. But if you believe today’s “crime scene”, nothing can be worse than living in a German city, the current example of Cologne. School: Horror because of violent classmates. Work: Horror because of mafia structures. And right in the middle: Inspector Schenk. He is called to a crime scene that is all too familiar to him. The restaurant of his daughter Sonja and her husband Karim burned down – and inside is a charred corpse.

Worse still: an accident cannot have been either. Everything points to arson – and a little later even to murder: the burned corpse has a skull that has been smashed in from behind. According to initial research, the dead man is the son of the “local king” Raschke. And Schenk’s son-in-law had debts to him. And you’re right in the middle of the urban jungle, which Schenk soon threatens to tear apart: he pulls out all the stops to provide his family with a safe place to live, drives his grandchildren to school regularly and at the same time tries to solve the case and the name of his son-in-law to wash clean Because Ballauf is convinced: Karim had something to do with the arson and the murder.