The funeral artist

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Der Totenzeichner is a detective novel by the German writer Veit Etzold that was published by Bastei Lübbe in 2015 .

The main characters

Detective Sergeant John Brooks is a senior detective on the Los Angeles Police Department's Homicide Division and is single.

Clara Vidalis is chief inspector at the homicide commission of the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) Berlin and is also single.

Dr. Martin Friedrich, called MacDeath, also belongs to the LKA Berlin and heads the Operative Analysis department there. Early in his professional career, he studied at the universities of Harvard and Virginia medicine before moving to the Department for several years behavioral research of the FBI worked. He's a widower . His wife died while on a secret service mission.

Aildrik Barings fulfills the orders given to him with the utmost efficiency and uncompromisingness. He is under the protection of the secret services and acts on occasion to fulfill his own preferences.

content

In 2004 a series of murders ran through Los Angeles (LA). The police found a number of corpses, where the commissioning of the crime suggests the same perpetrator. Everyone's heart was ripped out. The last dead is the son of the Los Angeles Police Chief. The perpetrator left his heart under a plate hood, sprinkled with herbs and pepper. Next to it is a napkin with the bloody inscription "Enjoy it d (e) ad". The police call the perpetrator Angel of Death. The police chief commits several years later suicide .

Ten years passed after the police chief's son died without the perpetrator reappearing. Then a gigantic figure appears in the Berlin apartment of a powerful gang boss. With her bare hands and a ballpoint pen, she kills the gang boss' pit bull when he chases the dog on him. The giant parried the criminal's knife attack also without using a weapon and tied him up. Then he carves deep marks on the gang boss with his knife before he finally kills him by removing his heart. He takes the heart with him.

Clara Vidalis and MacDeath are investigating the case without first obtaining any results. Only when MacDeath remembers where he has already seen the characters carved into the corpse of the gang boss, they manage to take a step forward. They get in touch with an FBI behavioral scientist and former MacDeath instructor, Ted Williams, who eventually comes to Berlin with the DNA of the L.A. Killer and Brooks. DNA reveals that the gang boss killer and the 2004 Los Angeles killer must be one and the same person. However, it does not appear in any of the queried police databases .

In the meantime, the giant has found three more - accidental - victims when he is pelted with stones by them during riots in his car. One of the three men survived the violence of the giant seriously injured, the other two not. Again the killer decorates one of the dead with characters that resemble a stylized roof (ᴧ).

In the course of the investigation, it gradually becomes clear to Clara Vidalis, MacDeath and the others that the wanted man is targeting criminals and at least his physical peers. Apparently the killer needs the feeling of risk to be able to succumb in the direct confrontation with the potential victim.

Accordingly, his next, carefully selected victim is again a powerful gang boss. In cold blood he shoots his bodyguard and two prostitutes who happened to be present . Then he breaks the backbone of his chosen victim , so that he cannot defend himself when the killer cuts into him in large numbers the already known signs.

In the meantime, the investigators have come up with the idea that the wanted person could have spent the ten years between Los Angeles and Berlin in military operations, albeit in special units, since the official databases still don't reveal anything. With Williams' help they gain unofficial access to a non-digitized CIA file and they learn the name of a potential perpetrator. However, the CIA quickly learns that a top secret file has been opened without authorization and data has been passed on. Shortly before special detachments from the Berlin police want to access the man, Aildrik Barings is removed from prosecution by the CIA ...

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