It is the end of October, the northern Swiss city of Basel is grey and wet. It could be December.

It is just after midnight when Hunkeler, on his way home and slightly worse for wear, spots old man Hardy sitting on a bench under a streetlight. He wants to smoke a cigarette with him, but the usually very loquacious Hardy is silent – his throat a gaping wound. Turns out he was first strangled, then his left earlobe slit, his diamond stud stolen.

The media and the police come quickly to the same conclusion: Hardy’s murder was the work of a gang of Albanian drug smugglers.

But for Hunkeler that seems too obvious. Hardy’s murder has much in common with the case of Barbara Amsler, a prostitute also found killed with an ear slit, and her pearl stud missing.

He follows his own intuition and the trail leads him deep into a dark world of bars, bordellos and strip clubs, but also into the corrupt core of some of Basel’s political and industrial elite. More ominously, he will soon discover the consequences of certain events in recent Swiss history that those in power would prefer to keep far from the public eye.

*****

When Detective Peter Hunkeler finds a dead body, he is soon pulled into a murder investigation that has a similarity to another unsolved case. Can he find the killer before someone else gets hurt?

I do love a good crime novel and so was pleased to be sent a review copy of The Basel Killings by Hansjörg Schneider, translated by Mike Mitchell.. I am unfamiliar with this author’s novels so this was a chance to discover something new.

This book is the first novel in the Inspector Hunkeler series and therefore does spend some time introducing the main character. However, this doesn’t get in the way of the action. The reader is immediately thrown into the story and it’s not long before a crime is committed.

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