The Black Forest Investigations
5 total works
"Night Hunters, like the previous three Black Forest cases, is hard-hitting and tightly written" MARK SANDERSON, The Times Crime Club
"Oliver Bottini is a terrific storyteller" Sunday Express
"Taut writing and pacy events" Sunday Times
"Always able to surprise the reader" BARRY FORSHAW, author of Crime Fiction: A Reader's Guide
The fourth in the Black Forest Investigations featuring Louise Bonì - by the four-time winner of the German Crime Fiction Award
At first nothing seems to link fifteen-year-old Eddie, a bit of a loner who finds solace swimming in the dangerous waters of the Rhine, and Nadine, a rich but bored student from Freiburg. Except for the fact that both disappear without trace, within days of each other. When Eddie's body is found, suspicion first falls upon his brutal and uncooperative father. But when Nadine's own father raises the alarm, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Bonì of the Freiburg police instinctively feels that the cases are connected.
An abandoned barn near the river soon becomes the focus of the investigation, beginning a trail that will lead Bonì and her team across the Rhine to Colmar, confronting them with the grim secrets of outwardly respectable citizens. Sometimes it takes very little to unleash the monster in man.
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch
** SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 2018 **
The first in a gripping new crime series set in Germany - the Black Forest Investigations
Louise Boni, maverick chief inspector with the Black Forest crime squad, is struggling with her demons. Divorced at forty-two, she is haunted by the shadows of the past.
Dreading yet another a dreary winter weekend alone, she receives a call from the departmental chief which signals the strangest assignment of her career - to trail a Japanese monk wandering through the snowy wasteland to the east of Freiburg, dressed only in sandals and a cowl. She sets off reluctantly, and by the time she catches up with him, she discovers that he is injured, and fearfully fleeing some unknown evil. When her own team comes under fire, the investigation takes on a terrifying dimension, uncovering a hideous ring of child traffickers. The repercussions of their crimes will change the course of her own life.
Oliver Bottini is a fresh and exciting voice in the world of crime fiction in translation; the Rhine borderlands of the Black Forest are a perfect setting for his beautifully crafted mysteries.
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch
The third in the Black Forest Investigations series - by CWA shortlisted author
One wet and misty weekend in October, the Niemann family find a stranger in their garden. He is armed and tries to force his way into the house, but disappears as soon as the police are alerted. That night he's back with an impossible ultimatum . . .
Freiburg detective Louise Boni and her colleagues are put under enormous pressure. Traces of evidence lead her to a no-man's-land, and to a ruthless criminal who brings with him the trauma of conflict in the Balkans.
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch
The second of the Black Forest Investigations - "Its plot bristles with invention" Guardian
It has been a long dry summer in the Black Forest idyll of Kirchzarten. When the local fire brigade is called to a burning farm shed, a volunteer is killed as a weapons cache beneath it explodes. The small community is shocked to the core. Louise Bonì, back with Freiburg Kripo after a period of withdrawal, is assigned to the task force dealing with the case.
The meagre evidence they gather points to a possible connection with German neo-Nazis or illegal arms dealers from the former Yugoslavia, but the appearance of secret service agents marking out the forest suggests more is at stake. Acting as her partner in the case is Thomas Ilic, whose allegiances are as conflicted as Bonì's. Who is in fact working for whom? In the most challenging case of her career - and one that puts her in mortal danger - Bonì must to overcome the ghosts of her past that continue to haunt her.
Oliver Bottini is a fresh and exciting voice in the world of crime fiction; the Rhine borderlands of the Black Forest are a perfect setting for his beautifully crafted mysteries.
Praise for ZEN AND THE ART OF MURDER - now shortlisted for the CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER:
"Surprising and genuinely shocking" Joan Smith, Sunday Times
"Gripping" Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler
"An atmospheric, original story that will keep you hooked to the final heart-rending revelations" Crime Review
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch
"A fitting and frightening conclusion to a magnificent series" The Times
The final instalment of the acclaimed Black Forest Investigations brings the series to a shattering close.
Louise Bonì, Chief Inspector of the Freiburg criminal police, gets intelligence from an informer that two guns have been bought from a Russian criminal network. Desperate to prevent a fatal act of violence, Bonì is swift to investigate. Before long she identifies the vehicle used to collect the weapons, but the car's owner has a watertight alibi. The man driving that night was Ricky Janisch, a neo-Nazi and member of the extreme right-wing group, the Southwest Brigade.
"Bottini is one of the most sophisticated crime writers of our times" JOAN SMITH, Sunday Times
Bonì and her team put Janisch under surveillance, and identify others belonging to the extreme right. The further they probe, the more shocking their discoveries. Could this be part of a much more powerful neo-Nazi network which will stop at nothing? And how will they prevent an attack when the perpetrators are always a step ahead and they don't know the target? By the time Bonì pinpoints the victim, it may already be too late . . .
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch