Marilyn's Mystery Reads

You might think that the words murder and mindfully don’t go together, but in Karsten Dusse’s debut novel they do.

Björn Diemel is a criminal defense attorney in an unnamed city in Germany, working at a large law firm.  He’s very much unappreciated, and he’s kept on by the powers-that-be solely so he can act as the lawyer for a very connected mobster, Dragan Sergowicz.

Björn’s marriage is imploding, and the only thing keeping it together is their young daughter Emily.  Björn’s wife tells him she wants him to be the man she married ten years earlier, full of aspirations and ideals.  So although he doesn’t really understand what mindfulness is about, he would “hitchhike from Sodom to Gomorrah” to keep his family intact, and he sets up an appointment with Joschka Britner, a mindfulness coach.  After several sessions, the importance of his new path is revealed to him.

Dragan is a pimp, a drug dealer, an arms dealer, and a tax evader; the other lawyers don’t want anything to do with him but are happy with the business that he provides the firm.  Dragan believes the world revolves around him and that he doesn’t need to take anyone else’s needs into consideration.

As Dragan’s attorney, Björn has access to his many properties.  Thus he has planned a weekend getaway for himself and Emily at a beautiful lakeside home that the gangster owns, a plan that is interrupted by a call from Dragan using the words “going for ice cream.”  That phrase means there is a major, life-threatening problem that Björn needs to solve immediately.

The criminal explains that he had to murder a competitor who was undercutting his lucrative drug trade by offering the drugs at half price.  Unfortunately, as Dragan killed the man and set him on fire, the entire episode was filmed by a school bus full of children and is now going viral, with Dragan easily identifiable.  Now Björn has to figure out how to solve the problem.

Dragan comes up with the solution, saying that he’ll hide in Björn’s trunk until they get out of town, and the attorney agrees to it, anything to get Dragan out of his office so he and Emily can go away for the weekend.  Björn and Emily drive away, Emily unaware that there’s anyone in the trunk.  Following the mindfulness he’s been working on, Björn agrees with his daughter that first they must complete the fun items on their trip, then he can take care of work.

So that’s how Dragan remains in the trunk, boiling to death, for the weekend, and how Björn commits his first murder.  The attorney thinks to himself that he’s not a violent man and he “didn’t kill anyone until I was forty-two.”  But the first murder went so well that the following week he kills nearly a half dozen more.

Murder Mindfully is a terrific first novel.  Björn’s character, as well as all the others in the novel, is outstanding, as we follow him on the path from unappreciated attorney to mindful murderer.  Karsten Dusse has written an entertaining and, believe it or not, thoughtful novel about how easy it is commit murder when you can convince yourself there is no other choice.

You can read about the author at several sites on the internet.  Murder Mindfully has been made into an excellent Netflix series.