12 November 2015. In Jan Segher’s novel, Süleyman, a young vagrant, witnesses how in Schwarzenfeld in Osthessen, a motorbike veers off the road and disappears in a hollow. When the young man rifles through the dead rider’s pockets, he finds an envelope with photos – photos that ought not to exist. Süleyman scents an opportunity to get his hands on some money. However, he has got involved with adversaries who stop at nothing. The chase starts – Süleyman has to get away. At the same time, a woman’s corpse is found in a Frankfurt hotel room. She has been shot directly in the eye – fluke or symbolic act? The victim is a well-known journalist. Inspector Marthaler discovers that she was on the track of a conspiracy – the Sterntaler conspiracy.

Jan Seghers was born as Matthias Altenburg in 1958. He studied literature and art in Göttingen. In 2004, he started to publish detective stories with Inspector Marthaler under the pseudonym Jan Seghers. After the success of his first novel, Ein allzu schönes Mädchen, further criminal cases followed for the inspector. The third book, Partitur des Todes, earned its author the Offenbach Literature Prize and the Burgdorfer Krimipreis. Die Sterntaler-Verschwörung is Marthaler’s fifth case. The Marthaler novels were made into films for the German ZDF television channel.

Picture: YariK / photocase.com