Sons and Brothers: A Polizei Bern Novel

The discovery of the body of Johann Karl Gurtner, a surgeon in his 70s, drives Hays’s middling second whodunit featuring Swiss detectives Giuliana Linder and Renzo Donatelli (after 2022’s Pesticide). The police believe Gurtner was struck in the face while walking his dog and pushed into Bern’s Aare River, where he drowned. Giuliana and Renzo’s investigation into Gurtner’s family and friends uncovers a prickly man with complicated relationships, yet no one with obvious motives to harm him. Their primary suspect is Gurtner’s photographer son, Markus, whose strained relationship with his father and troubled past raise suspicion that their contentious relationship could have turned violent. After a chance encounter, Markus befriends Jakob Amsler, a former classmate of his father’s, who was among the Swiss children taken from their families and forced into indentured servitude years before. Markus’s attempt to learn more about his father through Jakob’s experiences uncovers long-buried secrets with tragic consequences that reverberate in the present day. The routine plot never builds momentum, and readers will struggle to keep track of the large cast of mostly broad, inconsequential characters. Fans of international police procedurals can safely take a pass. (Apr.)