Lanner, an ambitious police investigator in a small provincial town, thinks he’s struck the jackpot when he’s transferred to Germany’s capital city. His joy soon evaporates, however, when he’s greeted by colleagues who sneer at what they see as a simple village copper, by a city population notorious for its lack of respect and by a pulsing, sprawling metropolis that shows an intriguing mixture of self-loathing and arrogance. Then a corpse turns up, buried three months previously in the garden of Lanner’s apartment block; a nameless body no-one seems to know but whose flat is stuffed with banknotes. News comes in of another mysterious death, this time the manager of Berlin’s biggest pest control company. A short time later, a plague of rats threatens to engulf Berlin...
Lanner’s not sure what he finds more draining: these interconnected yet baffling cases or the city life to which he’s finding it hard to adjust. His only ally works as a pest control officer, an old school acquaintance of Lanner’s who he hated. They begin unraveling a deadly enigma that takes them deep into the dark soul of the modern urban behemoth called Berlin. Beguilingly funny yet enthrallingly tense, this quirky and darkly atmospheric novel is as wondrous and foreboding as Berlin itself. The King of Berlin is Horst Evers’ debut crime novel.
