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Child Murder in the Village

Das Mädchen vom Wehr
Ein Crinelli Krimi*

Werner Köhler

Kiepenheuer & Witsch • Cologne • 2005 • 444 pages

Elfriede Müller
Translation: Anne Foster

 

Abuse and serial killers are popular topics in the media. This winning formula isn't only limited to American crime novels but also finds favour here. Werner Köhler has written a novel which readily fits the critic Thomas Wörtche's description of ‘Designer crime fiction'.

Take an attractive middle-class couple. He's a Police Superintendent, she's a feminist TV journalist. And of course he's a loner, so he fishes, he solves all his cases single-handed and so has the best clear-up rate at his station. Since she's heavily pregnant, they decide not to stay in Cologne but to move to the country. And wouldn't you know it, evil is rife. Not only are children tortured to death, but virtually everyone in the village has a skeleton in their cupboard, uncovered of course by the Superintendent. There's a corrupt village policeman, a tart with a heart, a prudish vicar, a voyeuristic optician, a butcher who sexually abuses his wife and other women, and lots of other nice people.

The beginning is too long. There's more pace and tension in the second half but the ending happens so fast that the author forgot to get the inspector to solve the violent attacks on his wife. Such a treatment of the subject of abuse fits exactly with the media's take on it and completely obscures the fact that 95% of acts of abuse are not committed by evil serial killers, but happen within the safety of the nuclear family.

* The Girl in the Weir, A Crinelli Novel.