Volker Kutscher books in order

It’s 1929 and Berlin is the vibrating metropolis of post-war Germany―full of bars and brothels and dissatisfied workers at the point of revolt. Gereon Rath is new in town and new to the police department.

When a dead man without an identity, bearing traces of atrocious torture, is discovered, Rath sees a chance to find his way back into the homicide division. He discovers a connection with a circle of oppositional exiled Russians who try to purchase arms with smuggled gold in order to prepare a coup d’état. But there are other people trying to get hold of the gold and the guns, too. 

Raths finds himself up against paramilitaries and organized criminals. He falls in love with Charlotte, a typist in the homicide squad, and misuses her insider’s knowledge for his personal investigations. And as he gets further entangled with the case, he never imagined becoming a suspect himself.

March 1930: The film business is in a process of change. Talking films are taking over the silver screen and many a producer, cinema owner, and silent movie star is falling by the wayside.

Celebrated actress Betty Winter is hit by a spotlight while filming a talkie. At first it looks like an accident, but Superintendent Gereon Rath finds clues that point to murder. While his colleagues suspect the absconded lighting technician, Rath’s investigations take him in a completely different direction, and he is soon left on his own.

Steering clear of his superior who wants him off the case, Rath’s life gets more complicated when his father asks him to help Cologne mayor Konrad Adenauer with a case of blackmail, and ex-girlfriend Charly tries to renew their relationship―all while tensions between Nazis and Communists escalate to violence.

Berlin, 1931. A power struggle is taking place in Berlin's underworld. The American gangster Abraham Goldstein is in residence at the Hotel Excelsior. As a favour to the FBI, the police put him under surveillance with Detective Gereon Rath on the job. As Rath grows bored and takes on a private case for his seedy pal Johann Marlow, he soon finds himself in the middle of a Berlin street war. 

Meanwhile Rath's on-off girlfriend, Charly, lets a young woman she is interrogating escape, and soon her investigations cross Rath's from the other side. Berlin is a divided city where two worlds are about to collide: the world of the American gangster and the expanding world of Nazism.

Berlin, 1932. A drowned man is found in an elevator, miles from any water. How did he get there? Has Gereon Rath got a serial killer on his hands?

The investigation takes Rath to a remote village on the Polish border where a wild man is said to live. Local villagers believe him to be the mythical forest creature known as the Kaubuk.

Kaubuk is said to have quit society to live in the desolate marshland, but Rath links him to a recent series of murders by drowning which have shocked Berlin.

Meanwhile Rath’s fiancée Charlotte has battles of her own. Her bosses don’t believe a woman should be working in the male-dominated police force.

Rath’s case is thrown off course when it tears open old wounds — wounds that lead to a fateful confrontation with the rising Nazi party. Can Rath catch the killer before they strike again?

Berlin, 1933. Buried treasure. A war crime covered up. A killer hellbent on revenge.

An ex-soldier, hideously disfigured and dressed in rags, is found dead under the railway arches. The post-mortem shows the victim was killed by stabbing from a strange three-blade weapon.

Gereon Rath is brought onto the case but finds himself getting nowhere. No one seems to be interested in a penniless former soldier.

Meanwhile, Rath’s fiancée Charlotte has been assigned the case of fifteen-year-old asylum patient Hannah Singer. Hannah killed her father and six others by starting a house fire a few years before but has now been declared mentally unfit to stand trial.

But Rath and Charlotte’s cases cross-over when a connection is discovered between Hannah and the dead soldier.

Meanwhile, the Nazis continue their relentless rise to power. The new Germany is a frightening place for anyone who doesn’t conform.

While Berlin burns, it’s up to Rath and Charlotte to unlock Hannah’s dark past to find justice for both the soldier, and for Hannah . . .