Straight Into Darkness
From the Desk of Faye Kellerman: A Letter to My Readers- As a curious child, I used to rummage through old cartons stashed away in my parents' bedroom. They were mostly repositories for faded black-and-white photographs of the family, including U.S. Army pictures of my handsome father when he was stationed in Germany. One day, I dug a little deeper and came across a dagger, its hilt emblazoned with a swastika. When I questioned my father, several long-buried stories surfaced. Fluent in Yiddish, his childhood language, my father communicated with concentration camp survivors-sometimes translating for his superior officers-and with average German citizens living around the camps. They claimed ignorance of what had gone on in their city. "Meanwhile," he said, "you could smell the stink of burning bodies two miles away." The dagger, along with a gun and a pair of binoculars, were spoils of war. Beyond that, Dad didn't elaborate. Extracting information from him had always been arduous, and since he died at fifty-three, I never learned all the specifics of his time in the service. But what he did reveal, I remember very clearly. Now, at the not-so-coincidental age of fifty-three, I present to you Straight into Darkness, a novel born of my passionate desire to connect to a hidden part of my father's life. Set between the two world wars, it is the tale of a serial killer in the city that nurtured the ultimate serial killer. At the same time, it is the very human story of Axel Berg, an ordinary German cop who must hunt an unspeakably evil murderer before unseen enemies tighten invisible hands around his neck and shroud the land in despair and depravity. While Straight into Darkness is my attempt to understand the inconceivable, it is also a personal journey. Perhaps as you read the novel, you might also remember a personal story about your mother or father, grandmother or grandfather. My advice to you is to write it down before it's too late.-Faye Kellerman
With ten consecutive New York Times bestsellers, Faye Kellerman is truly a "master of mystery" (Cleveland Plain Dealer). Now she turns her acute eye on 1920s Munich, a war-wounded city rocked by political agitation and stalked by a nameless, barbaric butcher. Lustmord-the joy of murder. The terrifying concept seems apt for the brutal slaying of a beautiful young society wife dumped in the vast English Garden. Homicide inspector Axel Berg is horrified by the crime...and disturbed by the artful arrangement of the victim's clothes and hair-a madman's portrait of death. Berg's superiors demand quick answers and a quick arrest: a vagrant, the woman's husband, anyone who can be demonized will do. When a second body is discovered, the city erupts into panic, the unrest fomented by the wild-eyed, hate-mongering Austrian Adolf Hitler and his Brownshirt party of young thugs. Berg can trust no one as he relentlessly hunts a ruthless killer, dodging faceless enemies and back-alley intrigue, struggling to bring a fiend to justice before the country-and his life-veer straight into darkness. Copyright 2005 by Faye Kellerman. Published by Warner Books.