“An excellently staged Berlin thriller that dissects economic entanglements and political intrigue in a well thought-out manner, has good twists and turns and remains exciting throughout. Anyone who likes to puzzle along will be well served here.”
Joker
Leserkanone
“Such reading pleases us, that a slight resistance to hearing so much about a thing and a person becomes exactly the opposite: namely wanting to know everything exactly now”
Elisabeth Römer
WorldExpresso
“Albrecht tells the story so directly and straightforwardly that one can hope for further assignments for the investigative team.”
Editorial office
Westphalian News
The killer who came in from the cold
The killer who came in from the cold
On his morning walk a major industrialist is beaten up and executed in cold blood. The trail leads Kiran Mendelsohn straight into the political minefield, organized Russian crime. far back into the German past – and directly to his nemesis.
I
n spring 2010, 72-year-old industrial magnate Friedrich Lautenschläger is attacked and shot dead in cold blood during his morning walk at Lake Wannsee in Berlin. The assassination sends Berlin’s top echelons of power straight into panic mode. Lautenschläger, a key figure in German-Russian industrial trade, was a regular guest at the Chancellery and the Ministry of Economics.
In this precarious situation, the senior public prosecutor in charge asks her old friend Kiran Mendelsohn for help: he is to assist the specially assembled team plus its extremely unorthodox leader Bolko Blohm as a profiler and co-investigator. Kiran is less than enthusiastic about this request. After a deadly exercise during his training abroad with the FBI in Quantico he had actually sworn off active field investigations. Instead, he was content to teach at the Federal Criminal Police Academy and accompany investigations as a profiler. Now he has to step outside his desk biotope and hunt down a cold-blooded professional killer. All this under constant pressure from above and under the suspicious gaze of the Federal Intelligence Service. And in doing so, he will probably put himself and others in grave danger.
It quickly dawns that this case is closely linked to the activities of the Russian mafia based in Berlin. At first through traces found on the body, then by information Blohm and Mendelsohn receive from outside. A peculiar godfather of the Berlin Russian mafia is supsiciously eager to share vital information.
Coming closer to the truth of thngs, additional murders increase pressure on the investigators. But then material from the Russian secret service provides the first clues to the killer’s true identity. When Kiran’s mentor from the BKA searches his private archives, the team finally discovers why Friedrich Lautenschläger had to die in such a brutal manner.
