EN: German book recommendation: 'Schlangenkopf' (Snake head) by Ulrich Ritzel

Over the past few months I have read quite a lot of detective fiction in German and somewhere along the way I have started to believe that I now really master this language. Then I began reading Schlangenkopf ("Snake head") by Ulrich Ritzel and got the big slap in my face which I knew that I deserved. During the first fifty pages I was repeatedly about to change for another book and more than once did I have to reread a page or two.

In my defense, I would argue that Ulrich Ritzel’s narrative style is not exactly easy. With every new chapter the perspective changes from one of the main characters to another, but instead of immediately mentioning these people by name, the author prefers to have us trying to figure out who it is, and reveals the answer only somewhere before the end of the given chapter.

The image of Germany which is painted in this novel is cold and anything but beautiful. We meet policemen who do not take a deadly car accident seriously, because the victim was a foreigner with a doubtful track record, but also cynical war criminals, orphaned teenagers and corrupt politicians. No wonder that the hero of the story – Berndorf, a former police detective – is dreaming of a dog and the serenity of his summer house perched at the German Baltic coast.

In any case, Ulrich Ritzel knows how to build up a very complicated story in a credible way. That this novel on top of that nourished my fascination for Berlin came as a bonus.

As of today, Schlangenkopf is the best detective novel I have read in German.

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Deutsche Version (kommt auch mit der Zeit...)
Svensk version