1. Winner of the Friedrich Glauser Prize, Germany's most prestigious crime fiction award. Other winners have included Bernhard Schlink and Martin Suter.

2. The first novel available in English of a highly acclaimed series featuring Basel police inspector Peter Hunkeler, a character who has acquired legendary status in crime fiction written in German. The second title in the Inspector Hunkeler Series is called 'The Silver Pebbles' and will be published in July 2022.


3. Hunkeler is close to retirement age, gruff, intuitive, and endowed with a deep sense of psychology. He is a master at teasing out revelations from witnesses, suspects and their entourage.


4. Empathy: As Hunkeler dives into the red-light milieu of Basel it becomes clear that the author (and his hero) have an affinity for the lost people of the night, those immigrants and other outsiders making a living on the edge of society. Hunkeler, an Aargauer, has been living in Basel for 40 years and yet remains an outsider, just like the foreign pimps, bar managers and prostitutes he must deal with to solve this case.


5. A strong sense of place: One of the pleasures of this book is discovering Basel's great beauty--split in two by the Rhine, dominated by its bridges and its cathedral--through the eyes of Hunkeler, a man deeply in love with his adoptive city.


6. Social and political criticism: As an outsider, Hunkeler is alive to class differences and social milieux. The contrast between the desperate world of Eastern European and other immigrants and Basel's narrow provincial elite informs the story. They live very differently but it turns out they both have an interest in the illegal drug trade. Also important to the plot are revelations about misguided government actions in recent Swiss history that the powers that be would like to keep safely buried.


7. The political/government background of the story makes this not just a mystery novel, but a social and historical story, pointing to the danger presented when the majority's rule becomes absolute, ultimately putting the majority's humanity at risk.