The Collini Case
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
FEATURED IN THE TIMES TOP 100 CRIME & THRILLER NOVELS SINCE 1945
A murder. A murderer. No motive.
Fabrizio Collini is a hard working, quiet and respectable man. Until the day he visits one of Berlin's most luxurious hotels and kills an innocent man in cold blood.
Young attorney Caspar Leinen takes the case. Getting Collini a not-guilty verdict would make his name. But far too late he discovers that he knows Collini's victim.
Leinen is caught in a professional and personal dilemma. Collini admits the murder but won't say why he did it, forcing Leinen to defend a man who won't defend himself.
And worse, a close friend, and relation of the victim, insists that he give up the case.
His reputation, his career and this friendship are all at risk.
But then he makes a discovery that goes way beyond his own concerns and exposes a terrible and deadly truth at the heart of German justice . . .
The Collini Case is a masterful court room drama that will have readers on the edge of their seats from start to finish - fans of John le Carre will love this.
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'A magnificent storyteller' Der Spiegel
'A murder trial full of political explosiveness: thrilling, clever, staggering' Focus
'Terrific' Elle
'Ferdinand von Schirach brilliantly draws you under his spell' Bunte
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Von Schirach, a prominent German advocate for the accused and author of two story collections (Guilt; Crime), disappoints with this present-day legal thriller, a "whydunit." Fabrizio Collini, a toolmaker in his late 70s, pretends to be a reporter for an Italian newspaper when he calls on 85-year-old Jean-Baptiste Meyer, a German businessman, in his room at Berlin's Hotel Adlon. Collini later confesses to shooting Meyer four times in the head, and then stamping repeatedly on Meyer's face. Caspar Leinen, who has just begun work as a defense lawyer, accepts the case before realizing that Meyer's real name is Hans Meyer, and that he's an old friend; but Collini wants Leinen to stay on the case, despite this personal connection. Given the advanced ages of the two principals, readers will have no trouble guessing that the killer's motive has something to do with WWII. Even the courtroom scenes lack genuine drama.
