In Free Fall

February 22, 2010
The theoretical physics concept known as the Many-Worlds Interpretation, in which “everything that is at all possible exists somewhere,” forms the backdrop for Zeh's second novel (after Eagles and Angels
), an engrossing if enigmatic story of a murder and its aftermath. German physicists Oskar and Sebastian are both friends and rivals, who have drifted apart after the latter's marriage. While Sebastian is driving his 10-year-old son to camp, the boy disappears during a stop at a gas station. When a woman phones Sebastian and tells him, “Dabbelink must go,” he interprets this to mean that to obtain his kidnapped son's freedom, he must get rid of Dabbelink, a bicycling companion of his wife linked to a medical scandal. Erudite digressions and vivid characters—such as a detective with a trusting nature who learns always “to assume the opposite of what she was thinking”—combine with a devastating 11th-hour reveal to make a memorable intellectual thriller.

February 15, 2010
A scholarly dispute over the nature of the universe erupts in kidnapping and murder in this gripping, high-toned philosophical thriller.

Ever since they were in school together, studying physics under the tutelage of the improbably nicknamed Little Red Riding Hood, Sebastian and Oskar have held fundamentally different views of the world. Oskar, now a big-shot physicist in Geneva who preaches the single-answer theory that holds that things are as they are and not otherwise, is chasing the Nobel Prize through his labors to unite quantum physics with the general theory of relativity. Sebastian, an experimental nanotechnologist at the University of Freiburg, is a proponent of the Many-Worlds Interpretation in which the Big Bang engendered countless parallel universes where things can both be and not be the case at the same time. When Sebastian married Maike, an artists' agent and gallery owner, Oskar made no secret of his verdict that Sebastian was settling for a consolation prize. Now that their son Liam is ten years old, he sneers that everything on earth that matters to Sebastian bears his surname. The day after Sebastian accepts Oskar's challenge to debate their positions on a live TV program broadcast from Mainz, he's driving Liam to camp when his car disappears with his sleeping son inside. By the time the empty car is returned, Sebastian has received a ransom demand that names a horrific price. Even after he complies with the kidnappers' demand and feels that the catastrophe has passed, his life enters a precipitous free fall that tangles his fate with that of dour murder-squad detective Rita Skura and her old mentor, Detective Chief Superintendent Schilf, who's teetering on the edge of death and love.

Though genre purists will find Zeh's (Eagles and Angels, 2003) bold use of coincidence nothing short of monstrous, readers who can surrender to her radical rewriting of the rules of detective fiction and the physical universe will find it revelatory.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 15, 2010
Zeh's second novel to be published in English (after "Eagles and Angels") is a highly cinematic thriller concerning an apparent kidnapping, a grisly murder, and the complicated relationship of two physicists. In places, it reads like a script, with blocking instructions. Because much of the novel is told from the viewpoint of Schilf, the detective who struggles to keep his sanity and solve the crime while a tumor devours his brain, Zeh is able to do some clever things with the narrative. Schilf, for instance, sometimes imagines himself as a character in the drama. VERDICT Zeh's smart novel will appeal to a wide range of readers (just try to overlook the unflattering depiction of a librarian). While readers might suspect early on who's responsible for the crimes, they'll appreciate the complexity of the main characters, who are superhuman in their disciplines yet rendered as complex, fragile, and sinister human beings. Zeh knows the science (e.g., parallel universes, the Second Law of Thermodynamics), but her brilliant portrayal of the main characters' psychological evolution is what drives the story.K.H. Cumiskey, Duke Univ. Libs., Durham, NC

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2010
German novelist Zeh, author of the award-winning Eagles and Angels (2003), turns here to an engrossing philosophical thriller about two physicists whose close, even obsessive friendship smashes head-on against professional rivalry and personal differences. Friends and fellow prodigies since university, Oscar and Sebastian go in different directions when Sebastian marries and has a child. Convinced that his soulmate has surrendered to mediocrity, Oscar feels betrayed, both by Sebastians marriage and by his support of the Many Worlds Interpretation of the universe, which holds that parallel realities exist simultaneously. Oscar, engrossed in the search for the Theory of Everything, which would unite quantum mechanics and Einsteins theory of relativity, finds Sebastians position absurd (and his minor pop-cultural celebrity status as an espouser of multiple realities galling). Everyday reality intrudes violently when Sebastians son is apparently kidnapped while en route to summer camp, and Sebastian receives a shocking blackmail demand. Enter Detective Superintendent Schilf, a German version of Dostoevskys Inspector Porfiry Petrovich, who carries his own philosophical and personal burdens. Casual mystery fans may find Zehs ruminations on quantum physics tough going, but those who welcome the notion of melding a challenging novel of ideas to a gripping Hitchcockian thriller will find much to savor in Zehs version of parallel reality. Recommend Zeh to anyone who enjoys Michael Gregorios similarly philosophical crime series starring Immanuel Kant as a sleuth.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)