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Killing Happiness

A Case for Jakob Franck
Novel
Suhrkamp | Insel
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Italy (Emons)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg), German Radio Drama (Deutschlandfunk Kultur)


Killing Happiness / Ermordung des Glücks
A Case for Jakob Franck
Novel

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...

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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 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...

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2017, 317 pages
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Persons

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,...


OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Light Years in the Dark
Year of Publication: 2024
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2024
A shopkeeper who had big plans for the future has disappeared. His wife thinks her dreams are over. Then there’s the former owner of a removals business with a guilt complex, and a mysterious visitor from the Berlin demimonde. The fates of all these characters intersect in Munich, in a turn of events that causes all their lives to go off the rails.

Leo Ahorn has disappeared. And yet,...
Pen
Year of Publication: 2024
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2024

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...

Bull’s Eye
Year of Publication: 2022
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2022

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...

Last Respects
Year of Publication: 2021
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2021

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...

All the Empty Rooms
Year of Publication: 2019
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2019

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...

The Fool and His Machine
Year of Publication: 2018
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2018

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,...

In My Father's Room
Year of Publication: 2017
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2017

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...

Naked Man Burning
Year of Publication: 2016
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2016

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...

Rights sold to:

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg)

The Nameless Day
Year of Publication: 2015
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2015
Detective Chief Superintendent Jakob Franck has been retired for two months and feels that he can now start to lead a life in which he leaves behind the dead - until a case from his past...
Rights sold to:

English world rights (Seagull), Italy (Emons), Greece (Gutenberg)

Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg), German Entire Radio Readings (HR and BR)

The Air Guitarist
Year of Publication: 2003
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2003
At the city’s vey first Air Guitar Championships, Süden’s colleague Martin Heuer comes second in the preliminary round – when suddenly his toughest competitor disappears without a trace. Together with Süden and the team from Department 11, Heuer sets out on a search: they find a suicide note and a woman who is deaf and understands everything, but doesn’t want to...
The Queen’s Secret
Year of Publication: 2002
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2002
When investigation the death of a man who starved to death in a seemingly deserted house, the CID comes across the name of a woman: Soraya Roos. This brings Inspector Tabor Süden to the scene, the expert for missing persons, because ten years ago Soraya left her family from one day to the next and has been considered missing ever since. Süden starts searching for her once more and...
The Woman with the Austere Dress
Year of Publication: 2002
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2002
Johann Farak, 41, son of an Egyptian, has disappeared. But apart from his sister, no one seems to miss him. He was a drunkard, they say, he painted pictures on wooden boards that were no good. Then a mysterious young woman turns up – and Inspector Tabor Süden suddenly realises what a sad life Johann Farak has led so far and that perhaps he had no choice but to leave this life behind ...
The Streetcar Drinker
Year of Publication: 2002
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2002
Tabor Süden is on leave, reducing accrued overtime and doing little else but letting himself drift along the streets of Munich. But then he is unexpectedly called to Department 11: A man is...
Rights sold to:

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Plataforma)

The Promise of the Fallen Angel
Year of Publication: 2001
Friedrich AniYear of Publication: 2001
Maximilian Grauke has left his wife without explanation. A shoemaker who wants to leave his monotonous life behind – or so it seems. But this is not the first time Grauke has disappeared. And...
Rights sold to:

Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Plataforma)


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