The Wolf Children

Book Two of the Inspector Frank Stave Investigations, a German detective trilogy set in post-WWII Hamburg. More than 150,000 copies sold.

Hamburg, 1948

It is a year of extremes. After a bitterly cold winter of starvation, the bombed city groans under excruciating heat. And Chief Inspector Frank Stave is confronted with a new case.

In the ruins of a shipyard, the corpse of a boy is found and Stave's hunt for the killer leads him into the world of "wolf children" - orphaned children who have fled from the Occupied Eastern Territories and are now united in gangs.

When two more bodies are discovered Stave is under even increasing pressure as he struggles to keep his personal life together too . . .

Praise for the Frank Stave Investigations

'Undoubtedly the most powerful work of crime fiction I have read this year' Independent

'Vivid and harrowing' Sunday Times

'Police procedural, romance, thriller The Murderer in Ruins has a bit of everything and it's one hell of a read.' Bücher

Reader reviews for The Wolf Children

'This is writing at its best. A well crafted murder hunt set in haunting landscape of post war Hamburg. Cay Rademacher has again written a book that will stay in my memory for a long time' *****

'Another atmospheric, well-researched novel from Rademacher. He has a remarkable ability to bring characters to life in the space of a paragraph' *****

'A bit of a goldilocks book. Not too heavy, not too light, not too long, not too short. Just about right' *****

Translated from the German by Peter Millar