Andrea Maria Schenkel

For me Andrea Maria Schenkel's The Murder Farm is a very unique crime fiction novel. The blurbs make comparisons to Truman Capote's In cold blood. Having not read Capote's work I won't comment anymore on that.

Set in a rural area of Post World War II Germany--the action of the novel progresses through the eyes of the killer and through the eyes of a false lead--a criminal and black marketeer. It is also helped along by the police testimony of neighbors and those acquainted with the show more victims--the Danner family. It is also a tale of incest and abuse--of greed and malice--of love gone wrong which leads to the killing of 6 people--an entire Danner family of 5 plus a maid who has only been hired on the very same day the murderer strikes.

The written testimonies of the various and sundry witnesses (which include the killer) is the only area of the investigation which Schenkel provides. The book presumes for the reader that the police are left without a trail or a motive. The discovery of the killer is presented as an epiphany in the final pages. A logic and a motive is there. The false lead serves to obscure and protect the motive. It is likewise obscured by the prejudices of the locals who cannot believe that one of their own could so brutally slay an entire family--even one as disliked as the Danner's.

The book reads very quickly. It is written mostly in short chapters and more or less chronologically follows the events as they happen--Schenkel rather artfully revealing details large and small as she goes along bringing us closer and closer to its jarring conclusion. For a crime novel--I found it a fun book to read despite its grisliness. She has excellent technical skills and is particularly adept at exploring the psychologies of those involved in it whether criminals, victims or witnesses in fairly terse descriptions.

Anyway I thought it was excellent and I'm hoping that more of her work becomes available in the near future. show less

Here’s fair warning: Do not start The Murder Farm when you’ve got a lot to do. This riveting novel sucks you in so swiftly and implacably that you won’t get your tasks done.

Author Andrea Maria Schenkel based The Murder Farm on the true story of an unsolved murder from 1922 in which an entire family was axed to death at the farm in a remote part of Bavaria. Should that add to the frisson of reading Schenkel’s novel? I have enjoyed non-fiction books that purport to reveal the show more “truth” after all these years about cold cases, be they notorious crimes like that of Lizzie Borden or more obscure ones. But the attraction of The Murder Farm really rests on Schenkel’s artistry. That Schenkel’s talent shines through even in translation is a testament to translator Anthea Bell.

Schenkel rechristens the victims from the Grubers to the Danners, changes the village’s name changed from Hinterkaifeck to Tannöd, moves the action from 1922 to the 1950s, but, by all accounts, leaves the rest of the facts unchanged. Killed were the abusive, tyrannical family patriarch, his beleaguered wife, his pretty daughter, her young children, and a newly hired maid on her very first day of employment. As in Lauren Oliver’s Rooms (which I’ve recently read) or William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the action is told alternately by an unnamed narrator, the victims, witnesses, unsympathetic neighbors, and, finally, the killer. Gradually, detail by small detail, the grisly truth about the bloody murders comes crashing down on the reader.

Atmospheric and chilling, The Murder Farm deserves every award it has won; I couldn’t put it down, as cliché as that sounds. I only hope my fellow Buddy Read sisters enjoy it as much as I did. show less

The small village of Tannod is shocked by the brutal murders of a local family and their maid. The bodies of old man Danner, the cold patriarch, his long-suffering wife, their daughter, Barbara, her two children whose paternity has long been the subject of gossip and speculation, and, finally, the maid who had just started that day were all buried under a light layer of straw in the barn. They had all been killed with a pickaxe. It would be four days before the alarm is raised and their show more bodies discovered.

Although set in the 1950s, the story is a fictionalized account of an actual murder that took place in 1922. The narrator remains anonymous throughout and the story is told sparingly and mostly through the statements or depositions of neighbours as well as through the thoughts of the victims and the killer who returns repeatedly to the farm before the discovery to take care of the animals. This gives the reader a strong sense of intimacy and involvement in the lives and secrets of the victims, the village, and even the killer. It also forces the reader to compare the statements of the witnesses with the reality and realize how many secrets are hidden in small villages, how much is real and how much just idle speculation, and how little we really know or want to know about the lives of our neighbours, a very disturbing thought to ponder. Interspersed between the testimonials are verses from the haunting and emotionally charged funeral prayer, the Litany for the Comfort of Poor Souls which adds to the overall sense of dread that builds as the story edges to its climax.

The Murder farm has a kind of dark rhythm that grabs the reader from the first page and never lets up until the last. Its sparse narrative adds to the sense of horror and keeps the reader thinking long after it’s finished. It is dark, disturbing, and a bleak look at life, love, and murder, and, once started, it is almost impossible to put down. show less

Ms. Schenkel models The Murder Farm as a traditional detective story. In much the same way as detectives must piece together various fragments of evidence to arrive at a provable conclusion, each shift in the narrator unveils another small image of the true happenings on the Danner farm, Similarly, just as said evidence takes multiple forms in real life, the evidence of the Danner farm murders are equally varied. Much of this evidence is not in what each narrator states outright but what is show more not said. Weeding through the implications of these omissions provides readers with a fascinating glimpse into the isolated lives of the inhabitants of this small German village as well as the emotions involved with such a gruesome crime.

Because of the variety of narrators, the story can only be successful if each narrator has his or her own unique voice. This is just one on the many areas in which Ms. Schenkel succeeds. The Murder Farm never feels like one novel pretending to be separate parts. It really does feel and read like a collection of stories that, when read together, provides a clear intimation of what occurred before, during, and after that fateful day. The voices are separate and distinct, making it fairly simple for acute readers to glean the truth before the big reveal. However, those readers who fail to make the connections miss none of the psychology or emotion of the conclusion, vital to any murder mystery.

The Murder Farm may occur in an isolated area of Germany and have its origins in a real-life murder mystery from said area, but there is a generic quality to it that makes it easy for readers to extrapolate the events into any isolated locale. The time period also may be the 1950s but the story feels timeless. So much so that any direct reference to the year can be quite jarring for readers, pulling them out of the narrative and back into the real world. This ephemeral quality makes it so easy for readers to sink into the horrors without having to worry about specifics like setting.

Short and sweet, The Murder Farm packs a powerful punch in a relatively few pages. Ms. Schenkel establishes the story’s ominous tone from the beginning with the use of eyewitness interviews of past events and makes the story even creepier with the inclusion of first-person narratives of current events. It is so much more than a whodunit novel though, something readers begin to understand as a clear picture of life at the Danner farm forms. show less