A spectacular cold case from 1930s Berlin – the new book by the bestselling author.
DAS VERSCHWINDEN DES DR. MÜHE
(Dr Mühe’s Disappearance)
by Oliver Hilmes
Penguin Random House Germany, August 2020 (voir catalogue)
During the final months of the Weimar Republic, a highly regarded doctor disappears. His sports car is found abandoned on the shores of a lake near Berlin. The homicide division investigates and discovers that the respectable medic’s carefully cultivated façade has been hiding a shady double life, whose trail leads from Berlin all the way to Barcelona. Oliver Hilmes has reconstructed this sensational and puzzling case from files discovered in Berlin’s regional archive. Enriched with fictional touches, Dr Mühe’s Disappearance is the gripping and ingenious story of the search for truth, and of the dark side of middle-class life on the eve of dictatorship.
Oliver Hilmes, born in 1971, studied history, politics and psychology in Marburg, Paris and Potsdam. He is the author of bestselling biographies of Alma Mahler-Werfel, Cosima Wagner, Franz Liszt and Ludwig II. His award-winning bestseller Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August was translated into several languages.
When Betty and John meet in London at a rally for nuclear disarmament, both are living with secrets about what that war did to them. After fleeing from Germany with her father in 1945, Betty lives with her memories of the Russian occupation, a young Russian officer, and the mysterious disappearance of her sister. John too, is plagued by flashbacks to his time as a translator for the top-secret T-force which uncovered Nazi scientific secrets, and to a young German woman who was brutally murdered, and for whose murder he was framed unless he talked… As their relationship develops, their lives unfold, unravel and entwine. But when a man from the past surfaces, he threatens to reveal secrets. Secrets which will embroil them in the Cold War and threaten their very existence.
Faiza has it all: a handsome husband, three beautiful children, and an idyllic lifestyle in Wimbledon Village. But then – in the middle of her first botox appointment – she gets a phone call from Tom telling her he’s lost his lucrative banking job. Her world starts to crumble. Tom thinks they will be fine – after all, they have their emergency savings to fall back on. Faiza knows better: she’s spent it. Desperate to avoid telling her husband or her friends that they are now penniless, Faiza decides to keep up appearances – and earn back the money before Tom has noticed its gone. In the process of trying to put it back, can she find the Faiza she used to be, before the trappings of her life overwhelmed her? And then, as one lie spirals into another, she starts to realise that she’s not the only one whose perfect life hides something much darker…
Paris, 1750. Madeleine, a young maid with a scarred face and a hidden past, goes to work for an automaton-maker, Dr Reinhart, and his clever daughter, Angelique. Only Madeleine knows the real reason she is there: there are rumours that Reinhart’s mechanical creations are the devil’s work, and she is in the employ of the police as a mouche, to spy on him and report back on his every move. Meanwhile, in the streets outside, children are quietly disappearing – and Madeleine fears for her young nephew. No one knows who can be responsible, but rumours abound around the clockmaker, and even the King of France himself… As Madeleine is drawn further into the household and its secrets, she comes to fear that she has stumbled upon an even greater conspiracy. One which might even reach to the heart of Versailles itself.