Bad Wolf
She looked at herself in the mirror, touched her fingertips to the little red hood on her head, and laughed. The dress was a real dirndl, with a short skirt and apron. Papa had plaited her hair into two braids, and she really looked exactly like Little Red Riding Hood in her fairy-tale book.He always brought presents—it was a secret that she and Papa shared, because he never brought anything for the others. Only for her. She was his favorite. The door opened, and she uttered a frightened cry when she saw the wolf. But then she had to laugh. It wasn’t a real wolf after all; it was only Papa, who had put on a costume. How lovely it was that she was the only one to share this secret with Papa. Too bad she could never remember anything afterward.
On a hot June day, the body of a sixteen-year-old girl washes up on a riverbank outside of Frankfurt. She has been brutally murdered and shows signs of long-term abuse, but no one comes forward with any information as to her identity. Even weeks later, the local police have not been able to find out who she is. Then a new case comes in: A popular television host is attacked, raped, and locked in the trunk of her own car. She survives, barely, and is able to supply only vague hints to the police, having to do with her recent investigations into an organization whose members are from the highest echelons of society, and the potential uncovering of a shocking history they’d prefer to keep from the public eye. As the two cases collide, Inspectors Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein dig deep into the past and underneath the veneer of bourgeois society to come up against a terrible secret that is about to impact their personal lives as well. It is almost too late for a person very close to Pia before she and Oliver finally track down the big bad wolf. . . . In Nele Neuhaus’s second U.S. publication of her enormously popular series, tensions run high both inside and outside police headquarters, and a complex and unpredictable plot propels her characters forward at breakneck speed
My Review
| I have never read Snow White Must Die but I have wanted to. My favorite genre is mystery/suspense novels. I had not problems with this book being translated. I agree with another reader that there were so many character view points that it was hard to keep them all straight. Plus, I did not really think that all the different voices help add anything to the story. Because this is the sixth book in the series and the first that I have read, I have missed the growing relationship with Pia and Oliver. So to me there were just ok. Nothing real special about either one. Although I do have to admit that this story was dark with the subject matter of child welfare and child pornography. In fact, the idea that drew me to this book with the bad wolf was an actual turn off for me. It was hard to read about an innocent child having to do the things the child did in this book. While, there was not gore in this book the details or hints of details about the subject matter was scary enough. I will still check out Snow White Must Die as I have heard this is the better book by this author. |
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