In this immensely satisfying and stimulating crime novel Insp Hunkeler investigates a murder with links to the Second World War. The award-winning The Basel Killings was the first to be translated in the Inspector Hunkeler series which is set on the Swiss, French, and German border. I have really enjoyed hunkering down into the stories, each novel can easily be read as a standalone, but the draw of this gently bitter and slightly twisted investigator calls me back each time. Author Hansjoerg Schneider adds a dash of humour, a love of food and wine, and the fabulous location into the plot. The translator Astrid Freuler ensures you feel settled within the story, yet continuously thrown off centre by the process of living on the border of three countries. Each time I meet Hunkeler, I become more fond of him. He may be tricky and stubborn, he is also smart-as-heck, and capable of real compassion (if the wind is in the right direction). The Murder of Anton Livius joins the ranks of an absorbing and worthwhile series.
For Inspector Hunkeler the New Year begins with a most unwelcome phone call. He is summoned back to Basel from his holiday to unravel a gruesome killing in a gardening allotment on the city's outskirts. An old man known as Anton Flockiger has been shot in the head and found hanging from a butcher's hook from the roof of his garden shed - like butchers hang the carcasses of dead animals. Hunkeler must deal not only with the quarrelsome tenants of the allotment but with the challenges of investigating a murder that has taken place outside his jurisdiction, across the French border in Alsace. The case becomes increasingly mystifying when Hunkeler stumbles upon a sinister Second World War connection. What exactly happened in the Alsatian village of Ballersdorf in February 1943? And how are those events connected to the case?
Hansjoerg Schneider (born 1938) lives in Basel and is the author of a number of highly acclaimed plays and the bestselling Hunkeler crime series. The Basel Killings was awarded The Friedrich Glauser Prize, Germany's most prestigious crime fiction prize.
