Book presentation / When the confessed murderer is acquitted!

A writer and educator from Liechtenstein, Armin Eri has studied Philosophy, History, Literature and German Linguistics. With more than ten books in his luggage – novels and collections of short stories -, he is the president of the Writers’ Union of his country. In 2014 he received the European Union Literature Prize for the noir “The Dark Muse” (Vakchikon Publications), translated by Christina Drekou, which is the first part of an already completed trilogy. In all three books his main character is medical student Julius Bendheim, who supplements his income by sketching crime scenes and courtrooms. In this way, he is seriously involved in solving problematic situations, as he offers the police various solutions.

We are in Berlin in 1865. It is summer, the heat is unbearable, and the atmosphere is further aggravated by a gruesome murder, where the well-respected philosophy professor Boto Goltz cold-bloodedly butchers the twenty-year-old prostitute Lene Kulm, after having previously had sex with her. Paid. After terrible ritual nailings, the petty criminal hits a neighbor and confesses his crime. We witness the crime as it unfolds before our eyes, and, being absolutely sure of his conviction, await the trial with great interest. Inspector Gideon Horlitz takes over the case. In the meantime, Bendheim meets law student and photographer Albrecht Krosik, with whose help he gains access to the forensic examination. Here we should note that Kulm lived with Gregor Haldner, a poor devil addicted to alcohol. The perpetrator seeks to prove that he is innocent and that the murderer is the lover of the prostitute whom he exploited, while also abusing her very often, judging by the obvious bruises he brought to her body.

A kind of judicial thriller, in which from the first pages we know the culprit, without, however, being sure that he will be convicted (!), since Golz’s intelligence and the mastery of his lawyer highlight the various loopholes in the Prussian Law that he had established by Bismarck. After we learn enough from the forensic examination detail after detail, we are taken to the courtroom, where a completely different Goltz appears, with new clothes and shoes, and even a headdress! And from the defendant’s stand, he raises as many questions as possible about his act. Both the judge Johann von Jennert and the prosecutor Theodor Jerne witness the professor’s documented apology, which literally names Haldner as the murderer, and the once certain result seems rather impossible. Based on the process, the author describes quite a bit of Berlin society, paying homage to 19th century literature, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, and Theodore Fontaine, who appears as a character in “The Dark Muse”, as well as a few others. surnames of the time.

info

Armin Eri

“The Dark Muse”

Bacchikon Publications

Pages: 260

Price: 13.36 euros