Munich from the perspective of the thriller author. In the south there is the concrete satellite, which some call “relief city”, others “ghetto”. The north also has hot patches. “If Neuperlach is a social hotspot, then the Hasenbergl is an eternal smoldering and smoldering.” In between: the “villa districts of the rich” and “those spoiled latte macchiato mother hens”. In Schwabing, on the other hand, decadence shows its bleached face in the rooftop bar of a five-star hotel: “Topped-up Moneten-Monroes with glitter glitter and Gucci bags charm slim-fit paint monkeys and tanned Lacoste yuppies.”
No, this novel is not an advertising campaign for Munich. Nor should he be. Henri Faber, who, as a Hamburg resident by choice, connects the home of his publisher dtv with the Bavarian metropolis, has set a thriller here in which children disappear, men pursue girls online, people die – in short: in which tough issues are dealt with. “I didn’t come here for sightseeing,” thinks Kim Lansky, the new inspector at Munich’s missing persons department.
“If Neuperlach is a social hotspot, then the Hasenbergl is an eternal smoldering and smoldering,” writes the author. His inspector grew up in Neuperlach.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Lansky is one of several selves in the book. As in his thriller debut “Ausweglos” (2021), Faber has four people alternately tell stories from the first-person perspective in the present tense, so he looks into four heads during the alternation of the short chapters. In the case of “Kaltherz” – in addition to the investigator – Jakob and Clara Lipmann, whose five-year-old daughter Marie has disappeared, last seen in the parking lot of Lake Feringa. Faber also looks into the child’s head. And strikes a particularly coherent narrative tone, for example when he lets the little one think funny terms (“Crap box”) and generally chooses simple, clear sentences.
Lansky, a rather easy-going contemporary, is determined to solve the case. She has already been kicked out of several departments by the police, now she wants to show everyone. Suspicious of having kidnapped Marie is, among others, the Lipmanns’ nanny. The fact that there is no ransom demand makes those involved suspicious. And why are so many children missing in Munich of all places?
As an advertising copywriter, Faber knows exactly what he is saying for which audience and how
Henri Faber, born in 1986, has mastered the tricks of the genre, playing with perspectives, deceptive manoeuvres. Nothing is what it seems. It starts with the prologue. It says at the end: “I have them on my conscience. I killed them. All three.” boom Sentences with power. As an advertising copywriter, Faber knows exactly what he is saying for which audience and how. While as Rudolf Ruschel (“Ruhet in Friedberg”, 2020) he lifts the black humor out of the cemetery floor with the undertaker’s shovel and imitates his compatriot Wolf Haas a bit too offensively, as Henri Faber he reduces word jokes and sentence swerves in favor of a plot-driven tension. Which doesn’t mean that here too, in the clarity of the thrill, you can’t discover sentences that make you smile: “Blonde, blue eyes, looks as if she had sprung from a Walt Disney drawing board … This is repeated with the mother Pattern: Clara Lippmann, twenty-eight, also blonde and blue-eyed, also Disney… Photoshop would shut itself down from boredom at her pictures.”
Back to the Munich picture. Here, too, the author shows exuberant imagination at one point. There is talk of a “slaughterhouse”. “An ugly concrete block, planned in the 1970s, touted as a prestige project for modern agriculture, ended up being the city’s biggest eyesore. Six stories of vertical factory farming: a high-rise pig house.” In the here and now of the story, the complex stands empty, is used for illegal raves, among other things, and serves as a backdrop for Faber’s suspenseful plot point in the middle of the novel. It’s a given that there has never been such a high-rise building for pigs in Munich. Travel guides are in a completely different corner in the trade.
Henri Faber: Kaltherz, published by dtv, 416 pages, paperback 16.95 euros