The Ice Queen

Finished July 17
The Ice Queen by Nele Neuhaus, translated by Steven T. Murray

This book is set primarily in and around Frankfurt, with detectives Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver Bodenstein the main characters. As the book begins, the pair have a case involving an American man, originally from Germany, a Holocaust survivor. The man is elderly, brutally murdered, with a number scrawled at the scene. While powerful forces move in to quickly remove them from the case, they have already gathered clues that make them question the man's real identity.
This is closely followed by the murder of another elderly man, with a similar scene, and the same number scrawled there.
When a third murder occurs, this time of an elderly woman, also with the same number, the detectives start to make links between the victims, links that keep leading back to a powerful local family.
The trail for these murders leads all the way back to World War II, and jealousy.
But there is also another story playing out among a younger generation that is linked to this story. When they also start to be found dead or wounded, the detectives find the two cases hard to separate, and wonder how many murderers there are.
I really like these two detectives, and the glimpses we see into their personal lives. They react to things based on their personal experiences, and make mistakes of judgement at times, but that just makes them easier to relate to.