Ice Cold - Softcover

Maria Schenkel, Andrea

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1849160074 ISBN 13: 9781849160070

Publisher: riverrun, 2010

Synopsis

Munich, in the late thirties, the first years of fascism - the last before the war: Kathie is desperate to leave her sheltered village life and sets out for the city, determined that she'll get by, one way or another. She is dark-haired, buxom and pretty, like the women who recently disappeared without a trace. Young women are being found around Munich, abused and murdered. Josef Kalteis has been arrested, but is he really responsible for all those misdeeds? Did they execute the wrong one while the murderer is still on the loose? Spellbound by the magnetizing story of the dead women, the reader follows young Kathie. Somewhere in between her naive search for luck and existential concerns, occasional prostitution and the desire for true love, she is in grave danger. Andrea Maria Schenkel has again created a novel based on real events, in which the story is told through several voices and documentation, including interrogation logs, witness statements and the dark thoughts within the murderer's mind.

About this title

Review:

"[Ice Cold] packs a far harder punch and lingers longer in the mind than many a longer, more convoluted work."--Laura Wilson, The Guardian

This novel is vivid, bleak and short . . . The novel certainly has power, and the story of the murderer (ignorant, violent and yet passive when confronted by authority) and his victims, as well as the other characters, is starkly memorable, not least because of the ability of the author to convey experiences from her characters' perspectives and with their emotions."--Maxine Clarke, Eurocrime

"From the propaganda of the Nazi politicians through the desperate lives of ordinary Munich citizens to the troubles of the sexually abused heroine, Schenkel marshals her material to fashion a novel that for all its brevity conveys an ambitious scale."--Barry Forshaw, The Daily Mail

"Schenkel, whose first novel, The Murder Farm, earned comparisons to In Cold Blood, draws readers in slowly with her extremely dispassionate style. As the oddities escalate . . . the book acquires a numbing power. Those who believe fiction needs sympathetic characters to involve the reader will meet their match in Schenkel. Schenkel's second novel, a No. 1 seller in Germany, takes leave from mainstream crime fiction with its merciless depiction of a rapist killer and his victims."--Kirkus Reviews

"Engaging . . . Schenkel marshals her material to fashion a novel that for all its brevity conveys an ambitious scale."--Express

"In the very ordinariness of Kathie's sorry fate after only a week in Munich, and in the plausibility of Kalteis's self-justifications, Schenkel illustrates one of the bleakest tragedies of modern times: that so many saw what was happening, yet no one really reacted-a metaphor for the Holocaust to come."--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"short, dark, and haunting --difficult to put down"--Killer Nashville

"the close reader is rewarded with story: tragedy unencumbered with sentiment, and brutality served up cold as ice."--Historical Novel Society

From the Back Cover:

Munich in the 1930s. Young women are being raped and brutally murdered. They are disappearing along quiet country lanes, cycling to destinations they will never reach. A Party member by the name of Josef Kalteis is executed for the crimes, but is he really guilty? Could the murderer still be out there?
Kathie has come to Munich looking for work, but found herself drawn into the city's sleazy underworld. Pretty and dark-haired, she fits the profile of the murderer's victims exactly. As she tries to reconcile her naive hopes for happiness and true love with the day-to-day struggle for existence, it becomes clear that she, like the others, is in grave danger.
Told in a hypnotic collage of interrogation logs, witness statements and direct, frightening insights into the mind of the murderer and his victims, Ice Cold is the second novel from the award-winning Andrea Maria Schenkel.

About this edition

• Publisher: riverrun
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1849160074
• ISBN 13: 9781849160070
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192