The Basel Killings

At the start of Swiss author Schneider’s excellent first mystery and series launch, Peter Hunkeler, an inspector with the Basel City criminal investigation department, stops to relieve himself on a tree after leaving a bar. He spots an acquaintance, an “old vagabond” known as Hardy “who always had a diamond in his left earlobe,” sitting on a nearby bench. When Hunkeler approaches Hardy, who doesn’t respond to the inspector’s efforts at conversation, Hunkeler discovers Hardy has been strangled and the diamond cut out of his ear. The murder resembles one of Hunkeler’s open cases—the strangling, several months earlier, of a prostitute whose ear was slashed to remove a pearl stud. Hunkeler, who takes the deaths personally, finds himself at odds with his bosses and at risk of losing his job when he dissents from the theory that the killings were related to the city’s drug-trafficking by Turks and Albanians. Schneider makes his flawed protagonist relatable and the truth behind the murders satisfyingly surprising. This gripping, plausible debut bodes well for future entries. (July)