Product Description

A whole family has been murdered with a pickaxe. They were old Danner the farmer, an overbearing patriarch; his put-upon devoutly religious wife; and their daughter Barbara Spangler, whose husband Vincenz left her after fathering her daughter little Marianne. She also had a son, two-year-old Josef, apparently the result of her affair with local farmer Georg Hauer after his wife's death from cancer. Hauer himself claimed paternity. Also murdered was the Danners' new maidservant, Marie, who was regarded as slightly simple. "The Murder Farm" is an unconventional detective story. The author interweaves testament from the villagers, an oblique view of the murderer, occasional third-person narrative pieces and passages of pious devotion. Officially the crime is unsolved, the narrator leaves the village unaware of the truth, only the reader is able to reach the shattering conclusion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #336826 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 181 pages

Review
...remarkable, sparse, chilling novel A... the literary equivalent of The Blair Witch Project A... it is hard to read this book without coming under the sinister shadow of an Austrian family incarcerated in the cellar for half a lifetime - The TimesAlready an international bestseller, this superior German crime novel explores the murder of an entire family. The novel is a collage of various voices and testaments with no 'drawing-room' expose at the end - the reader has to solve the case - Scotland on SundayThis is a pitiless portrait of inward-looking, bigoted peasants, beautifully written and equally well-translated. The book is gripping, and, incidentally, has broken sales records in Germany - Literary ReviewWith only a limited number of ways in which violent death can be investigated, crime writers have to use considerable ingenuity to bring anything fresh to the genre. Andrea Maria Schenkel has done it in her first novel, The Murder Farm A... that this has been packed into such a short novel is a considerable achievement - The Times Literary Supplement

Literary Review
...a pitiless portrait of inward-looking, bigoted peasants, beautifully written and equally well-translated. The book is gripping...

Daily Mail
A chilling little debut number... short, nasty and effective

Customer Reviews

Andrea Maria Schenkel-The Murder Farm

This short novel is ideally suited to being read in one
sitting.It stays in the mind long after completion.Set in
rural 1950's Germany, the narrator returns to an isolated
community where a whole family and their maid have been
slayed.Nobody in the community knows who is responsible,
they have turned a blind eye just as doubtless they were used
to doing living under the Nazis.The investigation takes
the form of terse testaments from the villagers,and these
are interspersed in the book with Christian devotions,which
adds to the mood of inner bleakness.The reader can come to
their own conclusion regarding the murderer on the basis of
the testaments.
The Murder Farm is an immensely creative and unusual novel,
that deserves a wide readership.

Great writing
Not a crime buff. Easy read but evocative imagery with such concise writing. Brilliant writing really.

A Very Well Written Murder Mystery, who leaves you guessing until the end.
I am an avid reader of anything murder mystery related. I was recommended this book by a family friend who just happens to be the publisher. The book was written by a new German Author, who incidently won a very prestigious prize for this, her maiden voyage into the literatary world.

The Book is about a farm in a remote village in Germany near the Black Forest. It is written about a time just after the war, when peoples emotions are still raw and are trying very hard to get their lives into some sort of order.

The book focuses on a murder that has just taken place on this remote farm. It starts off like an interview, all the relevant villages and people who know the people who lived at the farm, list their lives prior to the murder and their relation if any to the farm dwellers. The writing is sympathetic and well written and it is the only murder mystery that I have read and have not know the murderer right up to the end, which in itself is a new and brilliant experience to myself.

I cannot write any more about this book without giving away the ending and the story but I WILL HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT AS A GOOD READ. I did not put it down and it took me a day, I allocated some time to myself and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, it was like I was there.

PLEASE PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO PURCHASE AND READ THIS BOOK, YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.

Christine Williamson.