The Murderer in Ruins - Paperback

by Cay Rademacher (Author)

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER AWARD 2016

'Undoubtedly the most powerful work of crime fiction I have read this year' Independent
'Vivid and harrowing' Sunday Times
'Police procedural, romance, thriller The Murderer in Ruins has a bit of everything and it's one hell of a read.' Bücher

Hamburg, 1947

A ruined city occupied by the British, who bombed it, experiencing the coldest winter in living memory. Food and supplies are rationed; refugees and the homeless are crammed into concrete bunkers and ramshackle huts; trade on the black market is rife. A killer is on the loose, and all attempts to find him or her have failed.

Plagued with worry about his missing son, Frank Stave is a career policeman with a tragedy in his past that is driving his determination to find the killer. With frustration and anger mounting in an already tense city, Stave is under increasing pressure to find out why - in the wake of a wave of atrocity, the grim Nazi past and the bleak attempts by his German countrymen to recreate a country from the apocalypse - someone still has the stomach for murder.

The first of a trilogy, The Murderer in Ruins vividly describes a poignant moment in British-German history, with a riveting plot that culminates in a shocking denouement.

Translated from ther German by Peter Millar

Author Biography

Cay Rademacher was born in 1965 and studied Anglo-American history, ancient history, and philosophy in Cologne and Washington. He has been an editor at Geo since 1999, and was instrumental in setting up renowned history magazine Geo-Epoche. The Murderer in Ruins is the first novel in the Inspector Stave series; The Wolf Murderer and The Forger have also been published by Arcadia Books. He now lives in France with his wife and children, where his new crime series is set.