Lead Review
- Book: The Dance of Death
- Location: Black Forest
- Author: Oliver Bottini
The Dance of Death is a thought-provoking and informative thriller. Oliver Bottini has won several crime fiction writing awards in Germany – and it is not hard to see why.
Paul Niemann lives with his wife, son, and daughter in a comfortable house in a respectable area of Southern Germany. One afternoon he is visited by a very strange and somewhat frightening person – someone who just stands and looks at him from his garden. The visitor returns during the night, and tells Niemann the house is now his, and says that he must leave within seven days – or else face unspecified consequences. The visitor speaks German as if it were not his first language, but otherwise there are no clues as to his identity. Niemann claims not to know him, nor why he is being targeted in this way.
Seriously flawed (alcohol and more…) detective Louise Boni is tasked with the investigation. She gets close to the family (especially the daughter, Carola) and is traumatised by the way events develop. No more for fear of a spoiler!
Her investigations lead her into the underworld of ‘Russian Germans’ (ethnic Germans who had emigrated to Russia in the past and were returned to Germany after WW2 – knowing nothing of their ‘home’ country’) and into the world of Germans living in the Balkans – descendants of ‘Danube Swabians’ who had travelled down the Danube in times past to make a new life further South. Most had been Nazi sympathisers and had been rounded up and handed over by the British to the Yugoslav authorities. Many were butchered. Some families had lain low, and then returned to Germany – where they were often deported back to Bosnia or Croatia. Louise spends time in Bosnia and Croatia in her search for the truth about the man who had terrified the Niemann family.
The Dance of Death is a very good and exciting thriller. But it is more than that. It takes us into the little known (to me) stories of the events surrounding ethnic Germans living outside Germany at the end of WW2. I searched some of the place names and encounters mentioned – the events portrayed would seem to be true. Educational and enlightening.
The book is, as ever, excellently translated by Jamie Bulloch.
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