Bad Wolf

November 18, 2013
Neuhaus’s sequel to Snow White Must Die demonstrates the author’s maturing skills. The drowned teen on the banks of the Main River near Frankfurt appears to be the third victim of a summer party gone horribly wrong, but the water in her lungs is not river water, her battered corpse is not fresh, and her identity is a mystery. As Chief Supt. Pia Kirchhoff and her team at Kommissariat 11 work to discover who imprisoned and brutalized the young victim, more violence erupts: a scandal-mongering reporter is beaten, raped, and stuffed into the trunk of her own car, and a psychiatrist is consigned to a lingering, terrible death. Linking the murders is a tapestry of abuse and corruption, one that reaches to the lofty heights of German society and into Pia’s own department. While Pia has a surprising number of personal connections to the bad guys, this nuanced effort suggests why the author is a bestseller in her native Germany.

January 15, 2014
Another encounter with monstrous iniquity for Pia Kirchhoff, Oliver von Bodenstein and the other stalwarts of Hofheim's Criminal Police (Snow White Must Die, 2013). Even before she drowned, the nameless girl fished out of the river near the Eddersheim locks had suffered terrible damage. Her skin showed bruises and burns that were years old, and her malnourishment and pallor suggested that she'd been fed little and kept imprisoned away from the sunlight. Pulled away from a class reunion where she connected once more with her old friend Emma Finkbeiner, Pia, frustrated by the lack of leads, must also dodge the unwelcome attention of Frank Behnke, a disgraced colleague who's now working for Internal Affairs and bent on revenge. Across town, TV personality Hanna Herzmann gets a line on a shadowy story involving convicted child molester Kilian Rothemund and veteran thug Berndt Prinzler, a story so big and explosive that she's convinced it will send her career into hyperdrive, even though her producer, Wolfgang Matern, godfather of her unlovable daughter, Meike, urges her to drop it like a hot potato. She refuses, and soon, both she and Leonie Verges, the psychotherapist who brought the case to her attention, will pay a high price for their interest. The highest price, though, will be exacted from a long line of innocent children terrified of the Big Bad Wolf, from Lilly Sander, the granddaughter of Pia's live-in boyfriend, Christoph, to Emma's daughter Louisa, whose visit to the emergency room reveals injuries inconsistent with her fall from a horse. A densely plotted but sprawling exercise in unbridled evil. Spoiler alert: Most of the bad guys turn out to be good, and most of the good guys turn out to be bad.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2014

The second book (after Snow White Must Die) in the German police series featuring Inspectors Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein involves a complicated plot and a multitude of characters. Murders, kidnapping, child pornography, and corruption are only a few of the crimes investigated--but this thriller works! A young woman, first suspected of drowning, is determined to be the first murder victim. Kirchhoff and Bodenstein are unable to identify her, and their suspect has an alibi. At the same time, a brash reporter tracking down a child welfare story is attacked and left in her car trunk, and her therapist is murdered. Enter the inspectors, and the two cases merge into one. Commonalities between the crimes provide new leads and a new direction involving Germany's upper class, government officials, and even members of the police force. As the truth begins to unravel, a member of Pia's family is kidnapped, leading to an unexpected climax. VERDICT Fans of Jo Nesbo's gritty thrillers will enjoy the intricacies of the plot. [See Prepub Alert, 7/15/13.]--Frances Thorsen, Chronicles of Crime Bookshop, Victoria, BC

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.