The Sweetness of Life

Starred review from October 20, 2014
Austrian author Hochgatterer makes his U.S. debut with this remarkable thriller. Monsters appear to lurk in the forest-ringed fairy tale Austrian town of Furth am See, including whoever left the faceless corpse of Sebastian Wilfert in the snow for his little granddaughter, Katharina, to discover. Investigating the inexplicable Christmas-time crime officially falls to Det. Ludwig Kovacs and his vacation-depleted team, but potentially crucial evidence could come from quite a different quarter: child psychiatrist Raffael Horn, who is treating the traumatized (and now mute) Katharina. Skillfully mixing the observations of these two middle-aged kindred spirits—experienced enough to have lost their illusions, but not their humanity—with those of some of the more damaged townsfolk, Hochgatterer, himself a Vienna child psychiatrist, tells a suspenseful and shattering story with an elegance of expression that matches his exceptional insight into hearts and minds. Agency: Paul Zsolnay Verlag/Deuticke (Austria).

November 1, 2014
The small Alpine town of Furth am See in Austria looks like a Christmas card, snowbound and full of holiday decorations. In one house, a grandfather and his six-year-old granddaughter are playing a board game. The grandfather goes to answer the door and never returns. When the granddaughter decides to look for him, she discovers his body outside in the snow. Detective Ludwig Kovacs gets the case. His only witness, the traumatized granddaughter, is mute. Psychiatrist Raffael Horn is called to treat her. Intrigued by the case, he begins to investigate on his own. The parallel investigations reveal a truly creepy town, full of residents with major psychopathologies. This unremittingly dark tale will appeal to those with a taste for psychological thrillers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)