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Im wilden Osten dieser Stadt
In der schönsten Stadt der Welt liegt das gefährlichste Pflaster. Am Badestrand eines Hamburger Sees wird eine Leiche gefunden: Anwältin Kristina Wolland hatte ihre Freundin Angie am Abend zuvor getroffen — die schien verängstigt, wollte aber nicht reden. Nun ist sie tot. Tags darauf meldet ein junger Mann das plötzliche Verschwinden seiner Verlobten: Die junge Alina aus der Ukraine, wohnhaft zuletzt bei Angie, glaubte verfolgt zu werden. Welche Verbindung bestand zwischen den beiden so ungleichen Frauen? Was versetzte sie in Angst und Schrecken? Kristina Wolland ist fest entschlossen, es herauszufinden ...
240 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2012
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December 15, 2018I am prepared to blame Yuri Lotman for my difficulties with the crime genre. He and his group studying semoitics in Tartu were interested in the novels of Agatha Christie, in particular the way that she used a fixed number of characters and repeated stock roles but just changed the relationships to achieve a different story. Somehow that has lodged in my brain and I can't escape the realisation of how constructed crime thrillers have to be. The building blocks seem more obvious - something that occasionally I can mostly overlook in other fiction.
The problem with this is that it really grates on me when the criminals do something stupid but in a competent way. Blatantly serving the interests of the plot rather than trying to maintain the illusion of having any integrity and believable motivation.
In this case the plucky heroine is kidnapped in a smooth operation and taken from Hamburg to a brothel in Poland. Here, isolated and defenceless, totally exposed to the will of her captors, she escapes as soon as she wakes up by walking, completely unobstructed, out of the front door where she almost immediately meets a friendly passing German from Lueneburg who helpfully gives her a lift from Poland back to Hamburg. This serves no purpose whatsoever, save to demonstrate that the criminals can with cunning and skill carry out an abduction but are then so brain damaged that they neglect to guard their prisoner or even just kill her to get her out of the way. But never mind, at least they have added kidnapping, conspiracy and false imprisonment to their charge sheets. And it did string out the story for a few more pages.
This kind of thing is a bit of a trope - doesn't it also happen in The Yiddish Policeman's Union and in a Chandler story too? Whatever pretensions to intelligence that the criminals should have are sacrificed just to add a couple of pages of excitement to the plot.
The rest of the story is set in Hamburg and features a picture of the port on the front cover (unless it is the port of another city masquerading as the Hamburg harbour which would be truly terrible) but there wasn't in my opinion much sense of place. You could have changed the place names to those of any other city with a mass transit system and the story could have played there equally well. Maybe this is a strength, there are no references to local politics or history nor any dialect to frighten the unwary, but it is a disappointment if you are looking for something with a regional flavour. Nor was it hugely specific in terms of time. I felt that the background of Russian-Germans and young woman brought in from the Ukraine and Moldova to work as prostitutes could have taken place at any point over the last couple of decades.
Can't say I was impressed with the love interest sub-plot, the brief but unexplained appearance of a character who gave wise counsel, a character presumably reappearing from the first book in the series, was odd and seemed to illustrate that way the author had designed the plot more than anything else. I was more seriously puzzled by the background of Angie Gelterkind. I struggle to imagine that the higher education system was so liberal even in Hamburg during the 80s that a homeless young woman could manage to study law at University for a few semesters.
Apart from that the story was mildly entertaining and easy reading. Didn't require much in the way of concentration and would transfer easily to television.
The real puzzle is - will I remember any of this the next time I see her name on the spine of a book!
The problem with this is that it really grates on me when the criminals do something stupid but in a competent way. Blatantly serving the interests of the plot rather than trying to maintain the illusion of having any integrity and believable motivation.
In this case the plucky heroine is kidnapped in a smooth operation and taken from Hamburg to a brothel in Poland. Here, isolated and defenceless, totally exposed to the will of her captors, she escapes as soon as she wakes up by walking, completely unobstructed, out of the front door where she almost immediately meets a friendly passing German from Lueneburg who helpfully gives her a lift from Poland back to Hamburg. This serves no purpose whatsoever, save to demonstrate that the criminals can with cunning and skill carry out an abduction but are then so brain damaged that they neglect to guard their prisoner or even just kill her to get her out of the way. But never mind, at least they have added kidnapping, conspiracy and false imprisonment to their charge sheets. And it did string out the story for a few more pages.
This kind of thing is a bit of a trope - doesn't it also happen in The Yiddish Policeman's Union and in a Chandler story too? Whatever pretensions to intelligence that the criminals should have are sacrificed just to add a couple of pages of excitement to the plot.
The rest of the story is set in Hamburg and features a picture of the port on the front cover (unless it is the port of another city masquerading as the Hamburg harbour which would be truly terrible) but there wasn't in my opinion much sense of place. You could have changed the place names to those of any other city with a mass transit system and the story could have played there equally well. Maybe this is a strength, there are no references to local politics or history nor any dialect to frighten the unwary, but it is a disappointment if you are looking for something with a regional flavour. Nor was it hugely specific in terms of time. I felt that the background of Russian-Germans and young woman brought in from the Ukraine and Moldova to work as prostitutes could have taken place at any point over the last couple of decades.
Can't say I was impressed with the love interest sub-plot, the brief but unexplained appearance of a character who gave wise counsel, a character presumably reappearing from the first book in the series, was odd and seemed to illustrate that way the author had designed the plot more than anything else. I was more seriously puzzled by the background of Angie Gelterkind. I struggle to imagine that the higher education system was so liberal even in Hamburg during the 80s that a homeless young woman could manage to study law at University for a few semesters.
Apart from that the story was mildly entertaining and easy reading. Didn't require much in the way of concentration and would transfer easily to television.
The real puzzle is - will I remember any of this the next time I see her name on the spine of a book!
Displaying 1 of 1 review