Klaus-Peter Wolf

This is the second of three novels narrated by Dr Bernhard Sommerfeldt, so that Wolf's famous East Frisian police officer, Ann Kathrin Klaasen is reduced to a mostly offstage presence. Sommerfeldt has established himself in the first novel as an ordinary, decent man — albeit one who is living under an assumed name and practicing as a GP without any actual medical qualifications — forced to turn to serial-killing to protect the honour of his primary-school-teacher girlfriend.

The six show more murders he has to his credit so far have unfortunately rather damaged his reputation with Ann Kathrin, and he has been obliged to leave East Frisia and, when we meet him again, is living under a new name in the safe obscurity of Gelsenkirchen. It turns out that it isn't quite so easy to retire from serial-killing, though, and professional obligations soon recall him to the north. And there is also some unfinished business to attend to in Bamberg, and there is even more trouble when Sommerfeldt runs into his former receptionist Cordula, who is determined that they should join forces to become the Bonnie and Clyde of Langeoog.

In general, I don't like killer's POV very much, but I found this one with its very black humour and sardonic inverted morality quite appealing. It's realistic enough to be a moderately gripping crime story, but not enough to make you really feel sorry for the victims, who are in any case all society offenders who might well be underground. show less

Ostfriesland (East Frisia) is the bit of the German North Sea coast between the Ems and the Weser, including half-a-dozen assorted islands in the Waddenzee. English readers might know the area from the classic spy story The riddle of the sands; until recently Germans only knew of it for its notoriously high rainfall and tea-consumption, and its inhabitants as the butt of the same sort of tasteless jokes elsewhere told about Belgians, the Irish, Poles, blondes, viola-players, etc. But show more apparently it's on the way up again - North Germans who can't afford Florida or Bavaria are rediscovering the region as a place for holidays and retirement homes, and with the growth of the Ostfriesenkrimi phenomenon it also looks as though it's getting to the point where it can claim a fictional-murder rate comparable to international hotspots like Ystad, Oxford and Reykjavik. Obviously something that deserves a look, and where better to start than with Wolf's first book about Inspector Ann Kathrin Klaasen?

Actually, it's difficult to see what makes this book special. It's a good, routine sort of serial-killer story with a few clever twists, but there doesn't really seem to be all that much fascinating local colour here. Wolf's gimmick - such as it is - is that all the places he mentions (streets, bars, restaurants, etc.) really exist, and I'm told that a lot of them now have big signs up saying "Ann Kathrin ate here". And we get a walk across the Watt in the opening pages, a bit of wind and rain on the dike and a few seconds of sailing later in the book, but that's about it. Not really a book that would make me want to move to Aurich or Norden.

In line with Wolf's radical background, the plot is all about a charity that works with disabled people, and Wolf takes the opportunity to illustrate some of the less obvious problems faced by disabled people and those who are trying to support them. We don't get the feeling that we are being preached at, but Wolf gets his message across very efficiently here - he obviously knows what he's talking about. I also enjoyed the way he sneaked a Pippi Longstocking theme into the plot, not quite but almost under the radar. And he's clearly a fan of Jean-Claude Izzo's crime novels, which gets him a lot of bonus points from me!

On the other hand, Ann Kathrin Klaasen on this first outing comes across as something of a crime-fiction cliché - not only does the first murder take place just as she's leaving the office for a long-overdue spell of leave, but it also cuts into the evening that she'd reserved for telling her husband that she knows all about his extramarital affair. Oh, and it turns out that she joined the police force because her father was a police officer who was killed on duty, and she's still out to get his killers, and naturally she doesn't understand the words "you're off the case", or indeed accept any order she doesn't like from her chief or from the public prosecutor. Amazingly, she doesn't seem to have a drinking problem yet. But there are at least a dozen more books coming, so she's got time.

There are a few other silly clichés about - we keep getting told that characters did not know they only had four hours to live, and Wolf is sometimes such a man - when he's showing us how much women are exploited and mistreated in life, it always seem to require them to take their clothes off, and no vehicle, weapon, or wristwatch ever comes past without us being told the make and model.

Entertaining enough, and its heart is in the right place. The annoyances are mostly only noticeable because they are annoying things so many other crime writers do. I can't see myself ever putting him on my list of favourite crime writers, but I might read some more... show less

My thanks to The Author publishers and NetGalley for providing me with a Kindle version of this book to read and honestly review.
This a well written imaginative highly original detective mystery, set in the East Frisia district of Germany an area of the world I know little of, but the Author succeeds in beautifully describing it so that it leaps from the page. There are numerous characters which I found somewhat confusing at times, but nonetheless thoroughly entertaining a mix of clever dim show more eccentric and witty, and that is just the Police.
Spoiled slightly by a dodgy Kindle version and never ending chapters, in fact come to think of it are there any chapters.
Recommended. show less

Ich muss zugeben, dass ich etwas anderes erwartet hab, hauptsächlich einen Krimi. Tatsächlich geht es mehr um die psychologischen und emotionalen Zustände der Charaktere. Im allgemeinen find ich so etwas, z. B. beim Tatort, etwas anstrengend, allerdings ist "Ostfriesenkiller" doch gut geschrieben. Kurz vor Schluss ist das ganze etwas sehr dick aufgetragen und die Polizeiarbeit kommt mir zu kurz, der Täter ist zu schnell offensichtlich.