Night by Elie Wiesel

Night by Elie Wiesel
(Night Trilogy #1)
120 pages / 4 hrs, 17 mins

"Born in the town of Sighet, Transylvania, Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were taken from their home in 1944 to Auschwitz concentration camp, and then to Buchenwald. Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again."
--from the publisher.

The book completely lives up to its reputation.  I'm speechless.  Five out of five stars for me.

Ice Queen by Nele Neuhaus

Ice Queen by Nele Neuhaus
Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein (Book 3)

The third entry in this series reads as a prequel to the first two books due to he order in which the English translations are being released.    I enjoyed seeing the relationships from the first books before they developed plus it was fun to see the fully fleshed incidents that characters made passing reference to in the earlier stories.

Elderly citizens are being murdered execution style with the crime scenes all being tagged with the same five digit number.  Kirchhoff and Bodenstein begin to find connections between the crimes that leave them wondering what "facts" of the crimes can even be relied on as truth.  The story reads a little bit like a James Bond movie with the frenetic pacing and confrontational set piece finale.  That said I enjoyed it and found the links between the present and Germany's troubled wartime past intriguing.     

Bad Wolf by Nele Neuhaus

Bad Wolf by Nele Neuhaus - 464 pages
Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein (Book 2)

The second entry into this German police procedural series doesn't disappoint.  Readers are drawn into a web of lies that conceals horrible crimes happening at the highest levels of German society.  Neuhaus successfully merges elements from classic Grimm fairy tale into a modern day plot of violence and murder.  The discovery of a dead girl on a riverbank draws Detective Superintendents Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein into the mystery when it is linked to an offender in a previous headlining crime.  The overall plot is more clear to the reader than the main characters since its occurring in several independent threads at first, but just when you think you know what's happening, there's a twist to be enjoyed!   

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus - 374 pages

This bestselling German procedural introduces the detective team of Kirchoff and Von Bodenstein. The team is called to an odd traffic accident where a woman is pushed off an overpass into traffic. The investigation soon leads to a small village where secrets that have been festering for years eventually come to light. The action builds slowly but I enjoyed all the red herrings that kept me wondering the true nature of what was going on all the way to the end.