Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Walking along a street in Bern, Switzerland, Police Inspector Renzo Donatelli is startled when a teenaged boy crashes into him, nearly knocking him over.  Almost before Renzo realizes what happened, the teenager jumps up and runs away.  Although Donatelli chases him, the boy is faster than the inspector, and after a few blocks he is out of sight.

Since the boy’s flight seems to Renzo to be connected to his awareness of the inspector’s gun visible under his jacket, Renzo calls headquarters to see if there’s been a crime reported in the area.  When he hears that there was an incident in the Münster, the Gothic cathedral that is over six centuries old, that’s where he heads.

Inside the building he’s told that someone knocked a workman off a scaffold, but both the cathedral’s sexton and a woman working inside the Münster’s gift shop seem more concerned about damage to the stained glass window than to the worker who fell to the ground and injured his wrist.

Simultaneously, Giuliana Linder, a homicide detective with the Bern cantonal police, is interviewing a brother and sister who tell her that their stepmother has murdered their father.  Tamara and Sebastian say that their father had dementia and they wanted him to be placed in an appropriate setting, but that their stepmother, Ruth Seiler, told them that their father had been adamant about staying in the home he and his wife shared.

This led to increased animosity between the children and their father’s wife, culminating for the children in the discovery that their father died of an insulin overdose their stepmother admitted administering to control his diabetes.  But Ruth is consistent in saying that her late husband had forbidden her to tell his children about his dementia and that he hadn’t wanted to go into a nursing facility in order to leave all his money to his wife and children.  Tamara and Sebastian tell Giuliana that they’re not interested in his money, that they have enough, but that Ruth was willing to kill her husband for her share of the inheritance.

According to Swiss law, a man’s wife, not their children, has the right to decide about her husband’s medical care.  Knowing that what Tamara and Sebastian wanted for their father went against his wishes and those of his wife, why hadn’t Werner Allemann made a will to make his desires clear and save his wife from his children’s animosity?  Or had he made a will, only to have Ruth destroy it upon his death because it didn’t agree with the story she was telling?

When Renzo goes to the hospital the following day to interview Denis Kellenberger, he learns the story of the injured man’s life and his long history with the Münster.  Denis tells Renzo about being unjustly accused of not checking the doors of the cathedral when he was a child; that was his job, and the unlocked door led to the mother of his best friend climbing the stairs and jumping to her death.  Zora, he says, told me she hated me and “called me a murderer in front of everyone,” blaming him for her mother’s suicide.  Could the teenager who attacked Denis be Zora’s younger brother, whom Denis hasn’t seen in years?

Kim Hays has written another fascinating mystery about life in the “federal city” of Switzerland.  Both Giuliana and Renzo are realistic, believable characters, and the romantic spark between them and what that entails for their personal lives adds tension to the story.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novel.

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