The Basel Killings

It's the end of October, but it could be December. It is just after midnight when Basel Police Inspector Hunkeler, on his way home and slightly the worse for wear, approaches old man Hardy sitting on a bench under a streetlight. The usually very loquacious Hardy is ominously silent-his throat a gaping wound. It turns out he was first strangled, then his left earlobe slit, its diamond stud stolen. The media and the police come quickly to the same conclusion: Hardy's murder was the work of a gang of Albanian drug smugglers. But for Hunkeler that seems too obvious. The trail leads him deep into a dark world of bars, bordellos and strip clubs, but also into the corrupt core of some of Basel's political and industrial elite. On a more sinister level, he will soon discover the consequences of certain events in relatively recent Swiss history that those in power would prefer to keep far from the public eye.

Hansjo?rg Schneider, born in Aarau, Switzerland, in 1938, worked as a teacher, and journalist. He is one of the most performed playwrights in the German language but is best known for his Inspector Hunkeler crime novels. Schneider has received numerous awards, among them the prestigious Friedrich Glauser Prize for The Basel Killings. He lives and writes in Basel.