2012, ISBN: f5e98350be56513f9441728193bbcabc

This devastating dossier of savage stories takes us to the crimes that never reach the newspapers: small-town atrocities where the mundane lurches into the macabre and ordinary people fin… Mehr…

This devastating dossier of savage stories takes us to the crimes that never reach the newspapers: small-town atrocities where the mundane lurches into the macabre and ordinary people find themselves at the heart of horrific crimes, all the more compelling on account of their truth.Opening with an attack on a waitress by a band of musicians in a beer tent, we are led through the rituals of the Illuminati by a violent schoolboy sect, and invited to look into a briefcase full of photographs of mutilated corpses. There is the saga of a bungled drug heist involving a stolen car and a dog full of laxatives; the jealous husband who almost bludgeons his wife's lover to death; and the final chilling story of an eccentric madman who cleverly turns the tables on his own defence lawyer...Ferdinand von Schirach enacts this very same reversal on us: to read his disturbing accounts, told in cool, exacting prose, is to lose one's innocence and come to the frightening conclusion that, in some cases, guilty parties can be exonerated and perpetrators are often indictable by their guilt long before they are by the law., 2012<

2011, ISBN: f5e98350be56513f9441728193bbcabc

Meet Fahner, the retired small-town doctor who resorts to the garden axe when his patience with his cruel wife runs out. Or Patrick, so entranced by the sight of his sleeping girlfriend t… Mehr…

Meet Fahner, the retired small-town doctor who resorts to the garden axe when his patience with his cruel wife runs out. Or Patrick, so entranced by the sight of his sleeping girlfriend that he cuts a small piece out of her back, just to see what she tastes like. Or the silent assassin who calmly despatches two Neo-Nazi thugs on a railway platform.A nameless lawyer invites us to read an extraordinary dossier of violent and unspeakable acts. All the crimes have one thing in common: the guilty are never convicted in a court of law. But however heinous the crime, the narrator shows how the human circumstances behind events can tell a different story.Ferdinand von Schirach, himself a criminal lawyer, unveils a terrifying world where criminals elude justice, and the apparent innocents are perhaps the most dangerous of all. 'Guilt,' writes von Schirach, 'always presents a bit of a problem.' In this nuanced and telling collection, guilt is indeed never as clear cut as the crime., 2011<

2011, ISBN: f5e98350be56513f9441728193bbcabc

Meet Fahner, the retired small-town doctor who resorts to the garden axe when his patience with his cruel wife runs out. Or Patrick, so entranced by the sight of his sleeping girlfriend t… Mehr…

Meet Fahner, the retired small-town doctor who resorts to the garden axe when his patience with his cruel wife runs out. Or Patrick, so entranced by the sight of his sleeping girlfriend that he cuts a small piece out of her back, just to see what she tastes like. Or the silent assassin who calmly despatches two Neo-Nazi thugs on a railway platform.A nameless lawyer invites us to read an extraordinary dossier of violent and unspeakable acts. All the crimes have one thing in common: the guilty are never convicted in a court of law. But however heinous the crime, the narrator shows how the human circumstances behind events can tell a different story.Ferdinand von Schirach, himself a criminal lawyer, unveils a terrifying world where criminals elude justice, and the apparent innocents are perhaps the most dangerous of all. 'Guilt,' writes von Schirach, 'always presents a bit of a problem.' In this nuanced and telling collection, guilt is indeed never as clear cut as the crime., 2011<