Marek Krajewski – författare

When Abwehr Captain Eberhard Mock is called from his New Year''s Eve revelries to attend a particularly grisly crime scene, his notoriously robust stomach is turned. A young girl - and suspected spy - who arrived by train from France just days before, has been found dead in her hotel room, the flesh torn from her cheek by her assailant''s teeth. Ill at ease with the increasingly open integration of S.S., Gestapo and police, Mock is partially relieved to be assigned to liaise with officers in Lvov, Poland, where a series of similar crimes - as yet unsolved - cast a long shadow over the town. In Lvov he joins the ongoing investigation conducted by Commissioner Popielksi, a fellow classicist who relies on a highly unorthodox method of deduction. Meanwhile, Popielski is worried by the behaviour of his only daughter, Rita. Her head has been turned by her charismatic drama teacher, and now, unbeknownst to her father, she has started receiving letters from an ardent secret admirer. Eberhard Mock - older, a little wiser, but still a libertine at heart and equally at home in the underworld as in the ranks of authority - once again confirms his position as the most outrageous and unpredictable detective in crime fiction.

The butchered bodies of a young woman and her maid are discovered in a train-carriage. The dreadful slashes to their stomachs are rendered even more awful by the bizarre presence of scorpions, writhing inside the wounds.

Assigned to the case, Criminal Counsellor Eberhard Mock and his assistant Herbert Anwaldt must search for the truth within a society in the malevolent grip of the Gestapo, where corrupt ministers torture Jewish merchants for false confessions and Freemasons protect their secrets with blackmail and violence.

In a city already drenched in fear, Mock and Anwaldt''s hunt for the killer leads them to the time of the Crusades, an era when secret sects practised ritual murder.

A man bound, gagged and sealed alive inside a wall to die. Another quartered, his fingers severed. One of the victims was a musician, the other a locksmith. The only detail that the killings have in common - apart from their abnormal savagery - is a page of a calendar with the day of the death marked in blood.To solve these bizarre murders, Criminal Councillor Eberhard Mock must search for answers in Breslau''s underworld, a decadent demi-monde he knows all too well. As he pursues the investigation, his marriage is in decline. In revenge for his misdemeanours, Mock''s wife embarks on a sexual odyssey of her own involving a mysterious figure who appears to be connected with the apocalyptic fever gripping the city and high society of Breslau in the late Twenties. Mock, himself the most ambiguous and complex of policemen, must confront a cult that preaches the imminent end of the world.

Breslau, 1919: the hideously battered, naked bodies of four sailors are discovered on an island in the River Oder. As he pieces together the elements of this brutal crime, Criminal Assistant Mock combs the brothels and drinking dens of Breslau and is drawn into an insidious game: it seems that anyone he questions during the course of the investigation is destined to become the next victim. At the same time, he is haunted by appalling nightmares; only nights spent drinking and carousing can keep his demons at bay.Dark, sophisticated and uncompromising, the distinctive Breslau series has already received broad critical acclaim. Phantoms of Breslau confirms Eberhard Mock as the most outrageous and original detective in crime fiction.