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Happiness is extinguished completely when 11-year-old Lennard Grabbe doesn’t come home one night during the cold November days in Munich. 34 days later, he is found the victim of a murderer. Former Detective Chief Superintendent Jakob Franck, protagonist of Ani’s previous novel Day Without a Name, delivers the most horrible news of all to the parents – and so, happiness disappears from their house. And so does the happiness of other people connected to...
Happiness is extinguished completely when 11-year-old Lennard Grabbe doesn’t come home one night during the cold November days in Munich. 34 days later, he is found the victim of a murderer. Former Detective Chief Superintendent Jakob Franck, protagonist of Ani’s previous novel Day Without a Name, delivers the most horrible news of all to the parents – and so, happiness disappears from their house. And so does the happiness of other people connected to Lennard.
While the special task force is unable to make any progress in the case and the family cannot find a way to deal with the loss, Franck buries himself in witness’ statements and reports up to the point of total exhaustion, spends hours at the crime scene and employs his special technique of »Gedankenfühligkeit«, a sensory-conceptual abstraction of facts and thoughts guided by intuition – always in the hopes of finding the »fossil«, that crucial piece of information necessary for solving the case. He is not only driven by the need to bring the family clarity and help them ease their grief, but also by the painful memories of the unsolved murder cases from the days of his active duty.
After The Nameless Day, the first instalment of the series revolving around Jakob Franck, awarded the German Crime Fiction Prize 2016, now follows its second instalment, Killing Happiness. Yet again, Friedrich Ani combines deepest sorrow, human abysses and breathtaking tension in a novel whose melancholy can hardly be surpassed.
»[M]ore than a clever police procedural with an interesting European background and an intelligent sleuth. The writing makes us feel [the character’s] confusion, her descent into a deep depression. Truth shimmers and shifts. […] In narrative and in descriptive terms, I felt as if I was stepping into an Impressionist painting. Reality was there, but it was blurred, hard to grasp. There are no firm lines and no certainties. […] This is a subtle novel and all the more interesting because of it.« Ann Cleeves, British crime and mystery writer
»With Killing Happiness, Friedrich Ani has achieved a multi-layered novel defined by delicate characterisation and a subtle build-up of tension.« FOCUS
»Friedrich Ani writes with clockwork precision, in his unique, unconventional tone, sleek and sharp and still rich in atmosphere.« Frankfurter Rundschau
»Friedrich Ani could easily win the German Crime Prize for the eighth time.« Tobias Gohlis, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
»Crime writing can be so artistic and moving.« Welt am Sonntag
»Ani manages to appeal to the reader’s emotions. This shows utmost skill.« Hanspeter Eggenberger, tagesanzeiger.ch
»Ani’s crime novel is characterised by psychological intensity and dark melancholy in elegant prose.« Rainer Rönsch, Sächsische Zeitung
»This is why you long for Jakob Franck to chase the next rainbow when he hasn’t even finished his second one yet.« Elmar Krekeler, WELT ONLINE
»It speaks for Ani’s wit and intelligence that in the world of his truly extraordinary crime novels there is also room for the banality of coincidence.« Wolfgang Höbel, LiteraturSPIEGEL
»Ani makes demands of his readers. It is almost impossible to resist a strong emotional bias. But this is exactly what makes this readable novel stand out once more as praiseworthy and worth reading.« Sigismund von Dobschütz, infranken.de
»Once again, Ani proves to be a brilliant narrator and connoisseur of human nature.« Petra Pluwatsch, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger
»[M]ore than a clever police procedural with an interesting European background and an intelligent sleuth. The writing makes us feel [the character’s] confusion, her descent into a deep depression. Truth shimmers and shifts. […] In narrative and in descriptive terms, I felt as if I was stepping into an Impressionist painting. Reality was there, but it was blurred, hard to grasp. There are no firm lines and no certainties. […] This is a subtle novel and all the more...
Friedrich Ani was born in 1959. His first novel was published in 1996, and since then he has gone on to write crime novels, poetry and YA-fiction, as well as writing for TV, radio and theatre. He is an award-winning script writer, while his books have also received many prominent awards. So far, he is the only author ever to receive the German Crime Fiction Prize for three titles in the same year (2003).
Friedrich Ani was born in 1959. His first novel was published in 1996, and since then he has gone on to write crime novels, poetry and YA-fiction,...
A narrator, possibly a former monk, looks back on his life: there wasn’t any real space for childhood and youth in it, his father and mother did not play the role intended for them. His path led him from faith to doubt, from the village to the city. He escaped the city into the solitude of his hermitage, where he tries to put into words what leaves him bewildered, investigates the...
Police officer Kay Oleander was hit in the face with a beer bottle during a demonstration and lost his left eye as a result. Released from active duty, he struggles to get through the day – until fate leads him to Silvia Glaser. She, too, has been disabled ever since a bicycle accident. Unexpectedly, the two find support in each other – despite the fact that she is suspected of...
Seventeen-year-old Finja Madsen fails to come home after a party one night. There are no witnesses, no clues as to what happened to her. The investigation is at a dead end. Inspector Fariza Nasri interviews family and friends of the missing girl, including her mother’s boyfriend Stephan Barig. The party was at his house while he spent the weekend in the countryside with two friends. Barig...
In Friedrich Ani’s new novel, »the four« must spring into action: Polonius Fischer (the former monk), Tabor Süden (the returned missing person’s investigator), Jakob Franck (the former inspector, now retired, but still the deliverer of the worst news) and Fariza Nasri (the detective with Syrian roots, saved from her banishment to the provinces). All of them must...
Tabor Süden started out as a policeman before moving into private detective work, becoming an experienced specialist in missing persons cases. What he really wanted was to walk away forever from investigative work after the last case in which one of his colleagues lost his life.
Süden plans to leave Munich with no goodbyes. However, when his boss catches him at the railway station,...
Poetry owes many evergreens to »occasional poems«. In the case of Friedrich Ani, such poems constitute deliberate addressing, musically worded compositions if one considers current political-individual situations the occasion to which one must react immediately, showing oneself and the counterpart in all its vulnerability. These realistic-spontaneous sounds find very different forms: from the...
At the age of fourteen, a boy flees from the southern German village of Heiligsheim. Forty years later, he returns under the name of Ludwig »Luggi« Dragomir. The tough times he has had to...
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg)
English world rights (Seagull), Italy (Emons), Greece (Gutenberg)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg), German Entire Radio Readings (HR and BR)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Plataforma)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Plataforma)