Review of Nele Neuhaus's Snow White Must Die

Following a search tangent is like cutting
off a head of the Lernaean Hydra. Many
more search possibilities pop up.

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus, trans. by Steven T. Murray

Please cut me some slack today, as I give in to searchtangentitis, in which a word or idea prompts me to follow research trails that become increasingly unrelated until the original reason for searching has been lost. Nele Neuhaus's Snow White Must Die is full of searchtangentitis triggers. Just to give you a flavor of one of the trails I followed, I researched the German fairy tale and the Brothers Grimm, of course, and from there I went to dwarfs and apple varieties, Tales of Monkey Island (Disney, who made a Snow White movie, bought LucasArts, maker of the game Monkey Island), Haiti (an island), Tonton Macoute (scary-as-hell Haitian paramilitary group), wonton soup, Great White sharks, and Henry VIII. You get the idea. Since this is Friday, and Read Me Deadly has an "all bets are off" policy on Fridays, I'll indulge my searchtangentitis by giving some starting points for research as I talk to you about Neuhaus's book.

Snow White Must Die's prologue is a dreamy, tender scene reminiscent of the fairy tale. In a hidden place, an unknown man visits a recumbent woman, whom he calls Snow White. He knows she's dead, and, judging from her stiff and leathery skin, she died years ago. (→ mummy, a list of mummy movies, Steve Martin as King Tut, Nele Neuhaus)

The scene shifts, and it's Thursday, November 6, 2008. Famous German actress Nadia von Bredow is picking up her childhood friend, Tobias Sartorius, outside the Rockenberg Correctional Facility. Now 30 years old, Tobias served a 10-year sentence for the 1997 murders of two teenage girls, Laura Wagner and Stefanie Schneeberger. Laura was his ex-girlfriend, and Stefanie was his current girlfriend when they were last seen, entering Tobias's house. Tobias claims that his memory about what happened that night is a "black hole," and the bodies were never found. He was convicted on eyewitness testimony, circumstantial evidence, and blood stains on his clothes, in his room, and in the trunk of his car. Other physical evidence was found hidden in his house, and the murder weapon was found hidden outside. (→ international homicide rate, black hole, forensic crime fiction, amnesia)

When Nadia drops off Tobias at his family home in the Taunus Mountains village of Altenhain, Tobias is shocked by what he finds. His father, Hartmut, is a wreck, and the farm is strewn with trash. Hartmut's once-thriving restaurant has closed. His parents have divorced, and his mother, Rita Cramer, lives in Bad Soden. Tobias, who had planned to stay a few days, decides to help his father by cleaning up the property. When Tobias discovers one of his father's friends has taken financial advantage of him, he vows to stay until he can figure out what happened 11 years ago. This will not be easy, because the villagers are furious that Tobias has dared to return. A campaign of harassment begins. (→ Taunus Mountains, The Wall Street Journal, musophobia, German politics)

Among the few people who are friendly are Claudius Terlinden, the most powerful man in the village, and the father of Tobias's former best friend, Lars; Terlinden's autistic son, Thies; and a 17-year-old newcomer named Amelie Fröhlich, who works at the Black Horse. Amelie is friendly with Thies, and lives with her father and stepmother in the Schneebergers' old house. Everyone notices that Amelie has an "almost spooky" resemblance to the murdered Stefanie Schneeberger, who was nicknamed Snow White. Amelie has the "same finely etched and alabaster-pale facial features, the voluptuous mouth, the dark, knowing eyes." Until Tobias's arrival, Amelie found the villagers as interesting "as a sack of rice in China." Now she's obsessed with finding out about the old murders. (→ Altenhain, autism, graffitti art, snowflakes)

While Tobias deals with village hostility and a budding romance with Nadia, two significant events happen outside of Altenhain: a backhoe operator at a long-closed airfield in Eschborn discovers human bones and a skull in an empty underground jet fuel tank, and Tobias's mother is hospitalized in a coma after she's shoved off a Bad Soden pedestrian overpass and lands on a car passing below. Investigating these two crimes are Detective Inspector Pia Kirchhoff and her superior, Detective Superintendent Oliver von Bodenstein, who soon follow the evidence to Altenhain. There, they receive little cooperation. Pia notes discrepancies in the evidence that sent Tobias to prison, but what is she to think about Tobias's guilt when Amelie disappears? Man, there is no shortage of secrets in Altenhain. (→ prehistoric brain surgery, Freud on guilt, Patricia Highsmith, "guilt"-tagged movies, BMW cars)

Snow White Must Die is a beautifully atmospheric German thriller about a search for justice, involving themes of guilt and redemption, outsiders vs. insiders, and loyalty and betrayal. The village's cultural mores are fascinating, as are the topical issues in mental health and crime. It's the fourth book in the Bodenstein-Kirchhoff series, although so far it's the only one translated into English. Translator Steven T. Murray has done an excellent job. After the flow of Scandinavian crime fiction, perhaps we'll finally see more mysteries from Germany trickling in. (→ thriller genre, atmospheric optics, outsider art)

German cops, like cops everywhere, juggle personal loyalty to each other with loyalty to the force, and demands of work and family. I liked Neuhaus's cops. Bodenstein is the son of a countess (when he is wounded, Pia laughs to see his blood is red, rather than blue) and father of three children. Pia says he's Cary Grant handsome and charming. (Does Bodenstein remind you at all of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey or Elizabeth George's Thomas Lynley?) Bodenstein would be happier if Cosima, his movie-producer wife, stuck to Kinder, Küche, Kirche. Their relationship has been strained since their Mallorca vacation was interrupted by Bodenstein's job. Bodenstein is now miserable because he suspects that Cosima is having an affair. Pia also has distractions: Bodenstein isn't his usual self, her ex-husband is in a messy spot, and her farm remodeling plans were denied a permit. Despite these issues, the 41-year-old Pia is happy. Her lover, Christoph Sander, is a zoo director whose smile "always triggered in Pia the almost irrepressible desire to throw herself into his arms." (→ Cary Grant movies, German beer, Life of Pi)

I also enjoyed a peek at Germany's law enforcement and legal systems. A couple of things struck me: for murder, there's no statute of limitations in the US, but there's a 30-year statute of limitations in Germany. When those human bones are discovered in the old airfield fuel tank, careful forensic analysis to determine how long it's been since death is crucial. And, I was surprised that Tobias could study to become a locksmith while in prison; would that be allowed here? (→ statute of limitations, the Wright brothers, explore human anatomy, list of films featuring extraterrestrials)

Finally, Neuhaus repeatedly uses the Snow White colors⎯"white as snow, red as blood, black as ebony"⎯to gorgeous effect in descriptions of the winter settings, names (e.g. the Ebony Club, Schnee[snow]berger), and characters' appearances, emotions (e.g., black despair, white rage, red embarrassment), and relationships. Scenes alternate between the villagers in Altenhain and the investigating cops, but there's no trouble following the action. The plot is timely and twists smartly. Although the final quarter could have been trimmed, the suspense is well handled, with skillful misdirection and foreshadowing. Nele Neuhaus's Snow White Must Die was already an international best-seller when it was published by Minotaur Books in 2012. It's no wonder. I enjoyed it, and I'm hoping for more.

Grimm Reviews

Johann and Wilhelm Grimm

November 20, 2012 marked the 200th anniversary of publication of the Grimm brothers' Children's and Household Tales, a grisly and scholarly little collection of folk tales culled from German and European folk history. I had the fortune––or misfortune––to read fairly early versions of these stories as a child. They scared me silly and some made me cry; hardly suitable bedtime reading for children. Over the years, the original collection has been gentled down and the violence edited out, first by the brothers in subsequent editions, and then by many other writers. Disney finally tolled the death knell for several of these fascinating, but unsettling, ancient folk tales by turning them into sweet confections suitable for the very youngest reader, if possibly dangerous for diabetics.

The original Cinderella

In the Grimms' Cinderella, for example, the stepmother cuts off her daughter's toes in order to make the glass slipper fit. Not until Cinderella's bird friends point out that the slipper is full of blood does the dense prince realize that something is amiss. And at the wedding of Cinderella and the prince, the birds peck out the eyes of the wicked stepmother and sisters, striking them blind. A far cry from the bibbity-bobbity-boo, wish-upon-a-star tale of today.

Gretel shoving the witch into the oven

The best I can say of Hansel and Gretel's parents is that they weren't cannibals, like many characters in the Grimm stories, but being abandoned by your parents in the forest to starve or be eaten by animals is not a happy thing for any child to contemplate. This folk tale is believed to date back to the Great Famine in the early 14th century, and may be truer than we like to think. Who was crueler: the father who abandoned his children to certain death or the witch who fattened Hansel up for her dinner and enslaved his sister? I've never answered that question to my own satisfaction.

In Craig Russell's Brother Grimm, someone is committing a series of murders based on a modern novel in which the writer casts Johann Grimm as a madman and serial killer who acted out the stories he published in Children's and Household Tales. I don't usually read violent serial killer stories––they disturb me more than scare me––but this story line was different and the tie-back to the fairy tales creepily irresistible.

The shabbily dressed girl was found carefully posed on a beach, blue eyes open to the sky. A note folded into her hand read "Now I am found. My name is Paula Ehlers. I live at Buschwager Weg, Harkesheide, Norderstedt. I have been underground and now it is time for me to return home."  She had been strangled, but not otherwise molested. Paula Ehlers had been missing from her ordinary, loving, middle-class family for over three years. When her parents did not recognize the body as that of their daughter, Kriminalhauptcommissar Jan Fabel of the crack Hamburg Murder Squad feared that he was up against another cruel psychotic killer, like the one who had butchered a member of his team the previous year. He was right.

Infinity Mirror Room by Yayoi Kusama at the Tate Gallery

This is a remarkably convoluted tale that mirrors  a contemporary fictional book that expands on a volume of ancient folk tales. Each murder offers some clue to the next if the police are quick enough to spot it, and each mirrors one of the Grimm brothers' folk tales. The point of view shifts from the police to the murderer to the victims, adding to the bedazzlement and confusion. While hindsight shows that the author has strewn clues throughout, so much is going on in the story that I overlooked most of them. The conclusion offers a grisly "Aha" moment that ties the whole thing together perfectly. A creepy and disturbing procedural very worthy of the name Grimm, it definitely is not bedtime reading.

Lenny Henry as Chef

The use of German titles and words throughout the book was somewhat distracting, and at first led me to think Brother Grimm was originally published in German, but no translator is listed. I could have done with fewer Kriminaloberkommissars and Spurensicherungsteams; those long compound words make my eyes cross. The most amusing cross cultural quirk is that Fabel's staff all call him "Chef"––German, presumably, for "Chief." As a result, actor Lenny Henry as the irascible star of the Britcom series Chef kept popping into my mind while reading the book. A different mood entirely than the author intended, I am sure!

Craig Russell's work is apparently better known in Europe than in the US, and has been translated into 27 languages. He has written two series: the Lennox noir books, set in 1950s underworld Glasgow, and the contemporary Jan Fabel series, set in Hamburg. Brother Grimm is the second in this series. He speaks fluent German, and has made a study of post-WWII Germany which is apparent in his knowledge of the city of Hamburg. He lives in Perthshire, Scotland.

His books have won several international awards, and he is the only non-German to have won an honorary Police Star from the Hamburg Police for his books. Brother Grimm was nominated for a Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award in 2007.