Inspector Hunkeler is summoned back to Basel from his New Year holiday
to unravel a gruesome killing in a community garden on the city's
outskirts. An old man has been shot in the head and found in his garden
shed hanging from a butcher's hook.
Hunkeler must deal not only with the quarrelsome tenants of the garden
but with the challenges of investigating a murder that has taken place
outside his jurisdiction, across the French border in Alsace. The clues
lead to the Emmental in Berne, and then to Alsace where wounds from the
Second World War have never healed.
Series: The third in the Inspector Hunkeler series published in
English. The first was The Basel Killings published by Bitter Lemon in
2021, winner of the Friedrich Glauser Prize, Germany's most prestigious
crime fiction award. The second was Silver Pebbles, a beautifully
crafted thriller about stolen diamonds, drug couriers and people
accidentally caught in a vortex of crime.
Character-driven: Hunkeler is close to retirement age, gruff, intuitive,
and endowed with a deep sense of psychology and a horror of social
injustice. "Reminiscent of Wallander and Rebus, a little jaded, a bit
rebellious and always independent with a strong intuition." said the
Financial Times. It feels like Hunkeler investigates mostly by
spending time in the bars and inns of his beloved city and neighbouring
Alsace where he shares a small farmhouse with his long-suffering
'girlfriend' Hedwig.
Sense of place: It is a harsh winter with unusually heavy snowfall
and persistent sub-zero temperatures. The city of Basel and neighbouring
Alsace are evoked with great love by Schneider, who in real life lives
on the same street and frequents the same bars and restaurants as
Inspector Hunkeler.
As an outsider, Hunkeler is alive to class differences and social
milieux. The contrast between the xenophobia of the local police and the
Swiss press and the desperate, often lonely, world of Balkan and other
immigrants informs the story.