Dear Readers,

A sheer delight in fabulation compels me to cast a very wide net. At its core, this is the story of Elena Steinbrenner, a homicide detective from northern Hesse, who takes part in a writing workshop in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern holiday village of Ahrenshoop. For the married woman, the workshop serves as a pretext for getting illicitly close to the multiple award-winning bestselling author Marek Lorenz.

She believes herself to be the criminal seductress, when in truth it is the smooth psychopath who has set the forbidden affair in motion with fiendish skill. Marek is a predator of the worst kind. Years ago, he manipulated Elena’s twin sister Alina into becoming his lover. Why not say it plainly? He is responsible for the other Elena’s death.

Marek’s Modus Operandi

Then again ... “conscience” is not the right word. The term presupposes a morality that is alien to Marek. He did not simply kill Alina. He hollowed her out, drained her dry, and turned her fatal decline into a bestseller.

Marek savors his cruelties on several levels. He mixes himself highballs of ruthlessness. He regards his cunning as a divine gift. Above all, he revels in the ignorance of his victims.

Marek transforms authenticated pain into brilliant fiction. On the evening before the workshop opens, he gives a reading in the cultural pavilion on the road to the Hohes Ufer before a large audience. He reads from the “diary” of a woman who documents Alina’s path of suffering during the final stretch leading to her death.

His text reproduces Alina’s notes of despair. In a frenzy of omnipotence, Marek plundered her diary. To the applauding public, it is art. To Elena, it should have been a confession. Yet she does not understand. Her heart pounds in her throat; Elena feels only the sweet heat of infatuation. While Marek’s voice hypnotizes her, she is troubled by guilt toward her husband. She never doubts that she is acting entirely of her own free will—unable to see that she is already functioning flawlessly according to his script.

The backdrop of the picturesque Baltic seaside resort of Ahrenshoop, with its thatched houses, steep coastline, and sculptural wind-shaped trees, forms a perfect contrast to the psychological darkness of my plot. I’ll simply tell a few stories from the surrounding area in no particular order.

Jumbo always has one hand in his trousers, as though something essential would be missing otherwise. Luciano Moravia’s eldest son surely does not intend to appear ill-mannered. He is unaware of his poses. He stands at the center of his family’s care like a prize ox tethered in front of an endless supply of food.

Jumbo is not only fat and lazy; he also reeks of indifference. He has been pampered into shapelessness and stripped of all independence. He swallows his words so completely that people have to guess what he might have said before he forgets it himself. Nora does not mind. The eldest daughter of the mayor of Tillwitz comes and goes at the Moravias’ house.

Tillwitz is a neighboring municipality of Ahrenshoop—at least in this story.

Jumbo feels the pull of addiction. He needs a shot of television. Not that afternoon programming could free him from boredom. He calls for Luca, his youngest brother; he is too diminished to reach for the remote himself.

Luca takes in the situation with a glance that makes Nora’s bones shine. He recognizes the potential of his parents. Money can be found in every crack of their house. Ice cream is available around the clock. Luca is amused by the sluggish lump God has made into his older brother.

Otfried Vrunt enters the trattoria just as Nora, rushing past everyone, clears her path toward the next item on the day’s agenda. She still speaks to her father—or at least returns his greeting—unlike her sister Ella, who falls silent whenever “the progenitor” crosses her path. Every attempt to draw her back into familiarity and revive the original sense of family fails. Ella seeks scandal. Supposedly, she is burdened by the shame of being Otfried’s daughter.

Concern is Otfried’s strongest feeling toward his children. He reaches into a bag of peanuts from the Moravia family’s communal supply. Luciano shuffles over in slipper-wearing domestic submission and recommends spinach gnocchi in a creamy mushroom sauce.

The Isola Bella is the favorite Italian restaurant of many holidaymakers in Ahrenshoop. The fishing nets populated by plastic crabs hanging from the ceiling of the dining room indulgently suggest that time has stood still and invite interpretation as the last trace of the Capri fisherman era.

From four o’clock onward, Isola Bella is open to everyone. Maike and Manfred form today’s advance guard. They work well as a couple. Since Maike earns more, Manfred does more around the house. He also does more thinking.

He suffers from panic attacks whose origins lie inscrutably in childhood, an undiagnosed stress disorder. He combats his self-doubt and delayed psychological reactions through sport.

Maike and Manfred are raising a family with two children. Until the day before yesterday, they were on vacation in Lanzarote. There, Manfred pushed himself to his limits on his bicycle and stepped out of the system for a few hours every day. While family duties were suspended, he reflected on his life. His resources are not sufficient. He knows that now.

He spills cold soup. His wife regards him skeptically.

He is the kind of man one would have to wipe up after—if anyone actually bothered to wipe. She is a woman from Tillwitz who made it. Maike was a chart analyst for Deutsche Bank in London.

“Profits are always possible—it simply depends on the right entry point and the appropriate strategy.”
—A chart analyst’s platitude

A market is either oversold or overbought. After her first million, Maike quit. Now she manages the super-senior residence Schlapperschapp in Dändorf.

Manfred recalls a threadbare moment of freedom on his bicycle, climbing a mountain road in Lanzarote, battling the elements like a captain on the high seas. He would have been faster on foot than wrapped up like a sausage in a plastic casing—a gummy bear, a full-body condom.

Manfred thinks about how effortlessly his wife danced with a Frenchman: utterly unlike the way she had ever danced with her inadequate husband. Maike wears him down with compulsive optimism. Only when speaking to her parents does she stop trying to make the best of everything and lapse into childlike complaint.

Elena catches fragments of the family disaster while Marek traps her beneath the table with the movement of his legs. She tolerates it, including the fact that his hand disappears beneath the hem of her dress and moves swiftly toward the center of her body. Two days and nights have turned Elena and Marek into an experienced pair.

She tolerates it, enjoying the thrill of secrecy amid bourgeois dreariness. A pitying smile steals across her lips. How pathetic the married couple at the next table seem, trapped in such trivial patterns.

Two days and nights have turned Elena and Marek into an experienced pair. Elena looks down on the misery of others. Oh, she feels like a queen. She experiences an almost intoxicating sense of superiority. The others are wasting away in their routines, while she dares adventure, breaks the rules, and is desired by a premium human being. It is a feeling of exclusivity and power.

He—the famous writer—wants her so badly. How incredible is that?

At the same time, she blocks his advancing hand beneath her dress with professional firmness. For all her infatuation, she is not going to let Marek finger her in a restaurant. Nothing like that has ever happened in her life.

Of course, we all know the song. Elena finally feels alive again. She had longed so deeply for intensity. She experiences herself as the leading actress in a French arthouse film.