“Every year in spring and autumn, top-class authors from all over the world flock to the Isar to search for literary clues,” advertises the Munich Crime Festival on its own behalf. But a look at the program of the spring festival gives rise to doubts as to whether the run of international top authors to the Isar is really as big this year as the website of the event series claims.
Not that Volker Kutscher isn’t a top author – the festival starts with him on April 19 in the Literaturhaus. But the festival hardly exudes international flair this year, apart from the Scottish author Martin Walker, who lives in France, and the Swedish writer Mattias Edvardsson. With “Troubadur” Walker presents the 15th case of his French village policeman Bruno, while the Swede presents his fourth novel “The Truth”.
Successful author Volker Kutscher reads at the opening of the crime festival in the Munich Literature House.
(Photo: Andreas Chudowski)
The festival was founded in 2003, exactly twenty years ago, by Andreas Hoh and Sabine Thomas. Since Hoh’s death in 2018, Thomas has been directing the series alone. Even if the program is less international than in previous years, which may be due to a lack of financial resources – Thomas is silent on this despite repeated inquiries – the penchant for unusual venues has remained. However, there is hardly anything new here either.
It’s actually a comforting feeling to meet so many old friends, whether they’re authors who read or their brainchild, the inspectors. Many of the events are popular perennial favorites. The readings by Alfred Riepertinger, medical chief preparator at the Institute for Pathology at the Schwabing Clinic, are among the most successful events of the festival and are usually sold out immediately, as are the crime tours through Munich, to which the police club Blaulicht invites, or the two Dinner readings with Andreas Föhr in the Panorama Restaurant on Wallberg. In case someone does manage to get hold of a ticket: Föhr reads from “Herzshot”, the tenth crime novel about Inspector Clemens Wallner and the ever recalcitrant police chief Leonhard Kreuthner.
Of course, it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine exactly how long a commissioner has been investigating, since most of them have been on the job for quite a long time. Su Turhan, who is making up for the book premiere of “Tödliche Auszeit” at the State Criminal Police Office, which was planned for the festival in 2020, is the sixth case of the German-Turkish commissioner Pascha. Sophie Bonnet – the German author Heike Koschyk is behind the pseudonym – presents the ninth case of the former Parisian commissioner Pierre Durand. Uta Seeburg invites you to the book premiere at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, her Major Wilhelm Freiherr von Gryszinski, the special investigator of the Royal Bavarian Police Headquarters, is investigating again, but only for the second time. And in “Dark Canyons” Nikola Förg sends the proven inspector duo Irmi Mangold and Kathi Reindl off for the 14th time to illuminate human abysses. Only the Eberhofer Franz is missing. But there is still a little bit left until the “biggest crime event of the year” (crime festival). Rita Falk is coming to the Circus Krone with her twelfth crime novel for the autumn festival on November 12th.
Now it’s Volker Kutscher’s turn. With his crime novels about the Berlin detective inspector Gereon Rath, who gets caught up in the turmoil of the Weimar Republic and the burgeoning National Socialism, he has created a bestseller series that also serves as a template for the television series “Babylon Berlin”. “Transatlantic” is the ninth volume. He lets the Rath friends breathe a sigh of relief. At the end of the eighth volume, on May 3, 1937, while fleeing Germany, he had boarded the zeppelin “Hindenburg” heading for New York, the airship that exploded shortly before landing in Lakehurst. Luckily, Rath survived the crash, albeit seriously injured. And while he’s trying to make ends meet in New York, his wife Charly is having really tough times in Berlin. But that’s what Volker Kutscher should tell you.
Crime Festival Munich, from April 19, various venues, crimefestival-muenchen.de