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‘Mesmerising and utterly absorbing’ New York Times
‘A magnificent storyteller’ Der Spiegel
A retired small-town doctor takes a garden axe to his cruel wife.
A woman laces her brother’s food with barbiturates.
Two men steal a priceless Japanese tea bowl with brutal consequences.
What drives a person to commit a crime?
Our narrator knows that behind every misdeed is a story waiting to be told. In this collection of chilling cases, a nameless lawyer recounts the love, obsession, selfishness and despair that influenced his clients’ irrevocable choices.
Drawn from Ferdinand von Schirach’s eminent career as a criminal defence lawyer, Crime blends fiction with real life, each story a revealing, unsettling insight into what may compel a person to act beyond the law.
‘A magnificent storyteller’ Der Spiegel
A retired small-town doctor takes a garden axe to his cruel wife.
A woman laces her brother’s food with barbiturates.
Two men steal a priceless Japanese tea bowl with brutal consequences.
What drives a person to commit a crime?
Our narrator knows that behind every misdeed is a story waiting to be told. In this collection of chilling cases, a nameless lawyer recounts the love, obsession, selfishness and despair that influenced his clients’ irrevocable choices.
Drawn from Ferdinand von Schirach’s eminent career as a criminal defence lawyer, Crime blends fiction with real life, each story a revealing, unsettling insight into what may compel a person to act beyond the law.
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Reviews
Addictive . . . fascinating
Mesmerizing . . . a slim, utterly absorbing collection of 11 stories plucked from [von Schirach's] legal career and told in a cool, patient voice that immediately draws the reader in
Praise for Ferdinand von Schirach
Ice-cool, effortlessly classy prose
Tantalising and disturbing in equal measure
An exceptional prose stylist
A magnificent storyteller
Psychologically raw . . . delivered in a crisp translation by Katharina Hall, his unfussy prose is icily effective . . . it suggests that all justice systems are flawed, that they are all just processes. And, with immense empathy, von Schirach's stories show what happens to people when they are processed.
The stories are cool, meticulously crafted, pithy and mordantly amusing . . . this is an unsettling, affecting, extremely powerful book. Highly recommended
An impressive page-turner with substance and bite
Thrilling and edgy, often carrying a twist in the tale
