Droemer Knaur*

8
DETECTIVE FICTION / THRILLERS
Gert Anhalt
Sayonara to a Corpse
336 pages, 3-426-63297-7
March 2007
The long-awaited third case for Japanese
P.I. Hamada Ken!
Hamada’s journey of self-discovery at a
Zen monastery comes to an abrupt end
as he pinches a nerve and can’t walk
upright. He has to place himself in the
hands of a master of Shiatsu massage,
but while he’s busy with that, his friend
Sabu is kidnapped by some shady gangsters.
Sabu, the filthy-rich son of a corrupt
construction mogul, is obviously
involved in something serious, and
Hamada is determined to get to the
bottom of it.
Sabu is fished out of a canal, a bullet in
his head. At his friend’s funeral, Hamada
not only meets plenty of underworld figures,
he also sees Sabu’s aunt Sachiko
and her twin sister Michiko. Hamada gets
a job as a driver for the well-to-do ladies
and in doing so gets access to Yakuza
boss Kawaguchi and his fearsome gang.
This god-father of the Japanese mafia is
obviously behind Sabu’s murder, since
Sabu was just about to mess up an especially
shady deal between the underworld
and a group of corrupt politicians.
Gert Anhalt’s character has built quite a
following after his first two exciting and
funny outings, Dead Men Don’t Eat
Sushi and A Fistful of Yen. The author
was a longtime correspondent for German
TV, stationed in China and Japan.
Thomas Thiemeyer
Magma
550 pages, 3-426-66213-2
February 2007
Dutch rights sold to Karakter Uitgevers
A journey to the deepest spot on Earth
as disaster nears
Seismologist Dr. Ella Jordan gets the
news that strange signals are being received
in the middle of the Pacific.They’re
coming from the Mariana Trench, which
is 10.000 meters deep. Ella drops everything
to join a team of researchers heading
over there.They find a gigantic, perfectly
round stone that reacts to their
probing with a deadly heat ray.
What hardly anyone knows is that hidden
away in the mountains of Switzerland is
an underground lab where scientists are
working on a similar, though smaller ball
of stone, found decades earlier next to
the corpse of a geologist. Suddenly new
signals are detected: first from the North
Pole, then Russia, Australia, and the
Antarctic. Ella and Konrad Martin find the
same inexplicable stone shapes everywhere.
When the stones’ signals start to
be sent in unison, the resulting seismic
waves are so strong that they cause
earthquakes and volcanoes, and that’s
just the beginning. A countdown to disaster
begins, and Professor Martin is
convinced that only Ella has the key to
averting it …
Thomas Thiemeyer has earned comparisons
to Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, and
the Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child team.
Wolfgang Hohlbein
Storm
608 pages, 3-426-66168-3
March 2007
20.000 copies sold in Germany
Hungarian rights sold to Alexandra
Kiado
The latest mystery-thriller by “the
German Stephen King”
Computer specialist Dirk Gallwynd has
tried everything to find his 16-year-old
daughter Akuyi, who disappeared three
weeks earlier. Out of desperation, Dirk
has hired a private detective, whose investigations
lead to a small settlement on
the banks of the Ogowe river in Africa,
where the Stormbringer tribe has found a
new haven and guards an unfathomable
secret. Do these Stormbringers know
more about natural disasters than science
does? And can the knowledge of the
two groups be combined? Dirk not only
has to battle for his daughter, but he’s
also caught up in a dangerous adventure,
the stakes of which are no less than
saving mankind.
Wolfgang Hohlbein, born 1953, is one
of the most successful of all German authors.
This latest novel is the follow-up to
Fire (Rights sold to Hungary and
Spain) and Flood (Rights sold to
Hungary), both published by Droemer.