A punch in the face

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A slap in the face is a novel by the German writer Franz Dobler and continues the story of ex-police officer Robert Fallner from A Bull on a Train . Fallner now works for a security service and protects a movie star from a stalker . The novel was published in 2016 by Tropen Verlag, an imprint of Klett-Cotta Verlag .

content

Former police officer Robert Fallner has still not got over the death of the juvenile offender Maarouf, whom he shot dead during an operation. He broke off his psychotherapy, quit the police force, and his friend Jaqueline, also a police officer, left him after he caught her cheating with his colleague and threatening her with his service weapon. Fallner celebrates New Year's Eve in his local bar, Bertls Eck, with the aging punk Armin, who also has relationship problems, and a crazy women's band called The Excited Killer Bees , whose members find a lesbian couple in his bed the next morning.

New Year's morning is Fallner's first day at the security service with the grandiose name of Safety International Security . It is his older brother's company that hired him despite their difficult relationship. Fallner is supposed to protect Simone Thomas, a movie star who starred in erotic films like Die Satansmädels von Titting in the 1970s and left a lasting impression on the pubescent Fallner, from the stalking of a stalker. But first he has to assert himself against two unpleasant young men at her side, their illegitimate son and their manager, before he gets closer to her on a nightly mission about the common taste in music and film and finally becomes an eyewitness to an attack by the stalker who is her Throws in the window before fleeing on a motorcycle.

In the course of his investigation, Fallner finds several men who stalk Thomas on social networks. But even Simone Thomas is not a child of sadness and has acquired her high standard of living by blackmailing her son's secret father. At an exhibition on Thomas' filmmaking, the stalker committed another attack on his motorcycle, but this time he was overwhelmed by the security service. It's about Thomas' former lover Jimmy, who was instigated by her son to fake stalking in order to frighten her and get her money. Thomas forgives her son and in the end benefits from the public attention that the events brought her.

Fallner manages to apologize to Maarouf's family after the case is closed. However, there he meets several of the dead man's brothers and cousins ​​who beat him up until he is hospitalized. After all, Fallner can understand this as a kind of atonement and finally conclude with the boy's death. The relationship with Jaqueline has also relaxed, although she does not want to move back in with Fallner. On the other hand, a young girl whom he once met on a train journey through Germany asks him for help. A new story begins at the train station where he meets her.

Awards

A slap in the face reached fifth place in the annual ranking of the 2016 best crime list and third place in the national category in the 2017 German Crime Prize .

expenditure

filming

The novel served as a template for the television thriller Not To Be Dead (2020) by Nina Grosse with Iris Berben as Simone Mankus and Murathan Muslu as Robert Fallner.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tobias Gohlis : The best crime novels of 2016 . In: Die Zeit from December 15, 2016.
  2. ↑ 33rd German Crime Prize 2017 at krimilexikon.de.
  3. ↑ Shooting for the thriller "Not to get dead" with Iris Berben. In: zdf.de. February 11, 2020, accessed June 24, 2020 .