Based on the deeds of the most notorious serial killer in German history, Dirk Kurbjuweit’s The Missing is a sophisticated exploration of the relationship between crime, politics and society in a world in which anything seems possible.

Hanover, Germany, in the 1920s—the heady days of the Weimar Republic, of clashes between the police and political radicals, while the firebrand demagogue Adolf Hitler languishes in prison. A time of brutality and passion, of traumatised souls and attacks on democracy—and of grisly crime.

Boys are disappearing from the streets of Hanover, one by one. Every day new and gruesome rumours take wing. It’s as if the missing have vanished from the face of the earth, leaving no trace.

Detective Inspector Robert Lahnstein is assigned to the case, and is soon convinced that he is on the trail of a psychopath. Lahnstein knows he needs a new victim to lead him to the killer but he dreads the day when news will reach him of another lost boy.

The Missing is that rare book: a breathtaking thriller that also provides a complex social portrait of a fabled time. Dirk Kurbjuweit not only looks into the dark heart of a murderer but of an entire society.