At 43, Commissioner Voss has just returned to his home in Brandenburg, to his sick mother in his parents’ cramped house, which smells like smoke-dried time. He is without a doubt the only commissioner with a Depeche Mode poster hanging over his bed and who takes a call about a murder case from his childhood bedroom.
The woods where the body of the hunter is discovered – killed and laid out like an animal after a hunt – used to be his favorite place. This is where Voss watched birds and built caves as a boy. The victim owned part of these woods but he wanted to lease them to a wind energy firm, entailing the destruction of the forest. He had plenty of enemies – opponents of wind power, bat conservationists and even a former best friend. The clues are confounding.
Luckily there’s Maja, the Polish caretaker of his mother, who snaps Voss out of it time and again and asks him all the right questions at crucial moments. But everything changes when a second body is found in the woods, once again executed as if by a huntsman. Now they’re looking for a serial killer – or are they? Suspects disappear and stories that reach far into the past keep the commissioner awake at night.
Maxim Leo presents a sophisticated, thrilling crime debut that evokes the enchanting power of nature and explores in a subtle but spot on way the March of Brandenburg and its people.
