Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2015
352 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
The body of 92-year-old Jossi Goldberg, Holocaust survivor and American citizen, is found shot to death execution style in his house near Frankfurt. A five-digit number is scrawled in blood at the murder scene. The autopsy reveals an old and unsuccessfully covered tattoo on the corpse's arm—a blood type marker once used by Hitler's SS. Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver Bodenstein are faced with a riddle. Was the old man not Jewish after all? Who was he, really? Two more, similar murders happen—one of a wheelchair-bound old lady in a nursing home, and one of a man with a cellar filled with Nazi paraphernalia—and slowly the connections between the victims becomes evident: All of them were lifelong friends with Vera von Kaltensee, baroness, well-respected philanthropist, and head of an old, rich family that she rules with an iron fist. Pia and Oliver follow the trail, which leads them all the way back to the end of World War II and the area of Poland that then belonged to East Prussia. No one is who they claim to be, and things only begin to make sense when the two investigators realize what the bloody number stands for, and uncover an old diary and an eyewitness who is finally willing to come forward.
The Ice Queen is a character- and plot-driven mystery about revenge, power, and long-forgotten and covered up secrets from a time in German history that still affects the present.
"Readers need to pay close attention to this solidly plotted and densely populated drama full of red herrings, lest they miss key clues." - Publisher's Weekly
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nele Neuhaus is originally from Münster, Germany, but she and her family moved to the Taunus region of Hesse when she was a child. She became interested in books at an early age, and began to write her first stories. After secondary school she began studying law, German language and literature, and history, and worked for an advertising agency when she wasn't competing as a show jumper. Nele Neuhaus self-published before being discovered by Ullstein Verlag in 2008.
Nele's murder mysteries featuring the detective duo Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein have created an enthusiastic fan base and made the author one of Germany's most widely read crime writers. The TV films inspired by her Taunus murder mysteries have been seen by millions. A keen horsewoman, she also ...
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