January 2008:
Deutscher Krimi Preis 2008, 1.Platz
for Kalteis

The award is given by journalists specializing in crime novels from all important media in Germany (print, TV, radio, Internet-platforms) as well as bookshops specializing in crime novels.
Further information about the award: www.deutscher-krimipreis.de

Kalteis

By Andrea Maria Schenkel

160 pages, published by Edition Nautilus, Hamburg, 2007

Munich, in the late 1930s, the first years of fascism – the last before the war: Kathie dreams about city life and leaves the confines of her small village. She will get by somehow, won’t she?
She is dark-haired, burly and pretty, like the women who recently disappeared without a trace. The Devil seems to go by bike.

Several young women are being found around Munich, abused and murdered. Josef Kalteis has been arrested, but is he really responsible for all those misdeeds? Did they execute the wrong one while the murderer is still on the loose?

Spellbound by the magnetizing story of the dead women the reader follows young Kathie, who left her village to go to Munich. Somewhere in between her naive search for luck and existential concerns, occasional prostitution and the desire for true love, the disaster arises.

The course of events is being reconstructed through interrogation logs, evidence and missing persons announcements. But the reader will also listen to the victims as well as the murderer. The reader can follow the murderer's thoughts in detail and witness the women’s fear and struggling, too.

After her first and successful thriller Tannöd, Andrea Maria Schenkel proves to be a real master of the genre in Kalteis. Again the story is based on a true story: Johann Eichhorn was sentenced in 1939 because of rape and murder.