Her story was not believed by the police and she was forced into an asylum rather than helped. For five years they were subjected to appalling physical and sexual abuse and humiliation before luck presented Dunya with a chance to escape. Life was tough, but better than it had been back home.īut then Dunya was abducted, along with two co-workers, and held in a basement by five masked men who they came to know as the photographer, the priest, the huntsman, the cook, and the clown. Dunya is an illegal immigrant who was smuggled into Austria several years ago and worked at a hotel. On it, she finds serial recordings of Mark interviewing a girl called Dunya. In an attempt to feel closer to Mark, to keep part of him with her, she explores his mobile phone. Paralysed by grief, Blum feels caught in a nightmare from which she can’t escape. Massimo, Mark’s partner has promised that the killer will be quickly caught but the police make no progress. Their happiness is shattered when Mark is killed in what appears to be a tragic hit and run accident after leaving for work. Mark still works for the police and Blum is running her family’s undertaking business. She and Mark live in wedded bliss with their two children and Mark’s elderly father, Karl.

The method of killing is both ingenious and gruesome, it happens to be one of the best written scenes in the book and I won’t spoil it by revealing exactly what happens.įast forward eight years and Blum has married the policeman who discovered her dead parents.

After years of psychological and emotional abuse at the hands of her parents, our anti-heroine has hit upon exactly the right way to exact revenge and better yet, make the whole thing appear to be a tragic accident. Now Austrian author Bernhard Aichner has added his character, widow and mortician Brunhilde Blum, to a list stretching from Jim Thompson’s sheriff Lou Ford (The Killer Inside Me) to Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter.īlum is only just an adult when she kills her first victims – her adoptive parents. As readers, we are asked to empathise with every type of criminal, from small time grifters to murderers, sociopaths and even serial killers. Written by Bernhard Aichner, translated by Anthea Bell - Placing the reader in a moral dilemma by asking them to empathise with a transgressive protagonist is something crime fiction has always done particularly well.

Woman of the dead bernhard aichner