Snow White Must Die By Nele Neuhaus

Tobias is back in Altenhain, a German Village, after eleven years in prison. He was convicted for killing two girls. Now that Tobias is back in his village, everybody hates him and wants him to go away. He gets threatening letters, graffiti on his walls and gets even beaten. Is it just vigilantism or something else is happening here? Why is the whole village against him? He is not a serial killer, not a sexual predator, if the dead girls were seventeen Tobias was twenty too. One of the girls had dumped him that evening, the other probably witnessed his crime. If he killed them, it was not premeditated or planned, it was a crime of passion, and Tobias was not an outsider but a boy loved by one and all. So why this hatred against him? There was no proof that he killed the girls, the girls just disappeared and he was arrested on circumstantial evidence. So why does the village hates him is a question I can't help asking, and we are taken on an interesting journey to know this answer. When events of the past start repeating themselves, when another seventeen year old disappears, things become really difficult for Tobias. What happened to the girls eleven years ago? What happened to the girl who disappeared now?

When I read 'How the light gets in' by Louise Penny, I couldn't help comment that the cozy village where everyone looks out for one another is not something we read every day in our crime novels. But the village where everybody knows everybody's secrets, do not hesitate to do anything to protect themselves is more the norm in our crime novels, so is this village in this book. 

 

Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein conduct the investigation on the disappearance. I had a little confusion about Oliver's age. In the beginning we learn he has a two year old daughter, and then some way into the book we learn he is married for twenty five years, then we learn still further he has a grown up son who is getting married. Maybe this confusion because it is the fourth book in the series, but first to be translated into English. For a large tome this is quite a quick read, interesting plot line with multiple twists that gets very complicated. 

Translated from German by Steven T Murray

The Eye Collector by Sebastian Fitzek

When the story starts with an epilogue and the first chapter is the end, one can't help asking, if this is just a gimmick or it serves a purpose. Eavesdropping into the Police Radio ex-cop and now reporter Alexander Zorbach discovers that the Eye Collector is at work again. And the countdown begins. The Eye Collector of Berlin is a serial killer, who kills the wife, kidnaps the child and challenges the husband to find the child before the stopwatch in his dead wife's hand stops, playing a deadly game of Hide and Seek. When the husband fails, he sends back the dead child with only one eye, as his name suggests.

Alex gets embroiled in this case. He meets Alina Gergoriev who is blind, who tells him a story that he is not sure if he can believe. Alina tells him that at certain times she has visions about the past. Alina is a massager and on touching her latest client, she sees a vision. She sees him killing the wife and kidnapping the child and is sure that he is the Eye Collector. How did Alina trace Alex? They start investigating the vision and get involved in the case more and more. Will Alex and Alina save the child before the stopwatch stops? Can Alex trust Alina?

This is a fast-paced book with very short chapters and good size font that is really easy on the eye. The events follow one after another, that the thoughts lingering in the back of my mind surfaced only at the end, so whatever happened in the end is not really a surprise, the whole story had been moving towards this conclusion. Still there are other surprises and twists and turns. Given the title I had to think that the book would be gory and graphic. It isn't. At least, he does not go into the mechanics of eye collection. Fitzek uses mythology to explain why the eye collector is doing what he is doing. Do serial killers take a short course in mythology?

By using Alina as one of the key characters in the story, Fitzek points out in his acknowledgements, he wanted to answer his and our questions about blind. Have you ever wondered how do the blind dream? Do they see images like us or is it different? Do they 'watch' TV? How do they distinguish colours? Fitzek points out that he had conducted research and got information to answer some of these questions and to remove some of the preconceived notions we may have about them from watching movies and reading books.

Yes! The reverse story telling does serve a purpose and is not a gimmick. Originally published in German, The Eye Collector is translated into English by John Brownjohn and published in 2012.