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Bodenstein and Kirchhoff is a series of crime thriller mystery novels written by Nele Neuhaus. The books follow the exploits of a pair of German detectives who solve crimes.
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Order of Bodenstein & Kirchhoff Series
| # | Read | Title | Published | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eine unbeliebte Frau | 2006 | Description / Buy | |
| 2 | Mordsfreunde | 2007 | Description / Buy | |
| 3 | The Ice Queen / Tiefe Wunden | 2009 | Description / Buy | |
| 4 | Snow White Must Die / Schneewittchen muss sterben | 2010 | Description / Buy | |
| 5 | Wer Wind sät | 2011 | Description / Buy | |
| 6 | Bad Wolf / Big Bad Wolf / Böser Wolf | 2012 | Description / Buy | |
| 7 | I Am Your Judge / To Catch a Killer / Die Lebenden und die Toten | 2014 | Description / Buy | |
| 8 | Im Wald | 2016 | Description / Buy | |
| 9 | Muttertag | 2018 | Description / Buy | |
| 10 | In ewiger Freundschaft | 2021 | Description / Buy |
Readers first meet Oliver von Bodenstein and Pia Kirchhoff in An Unloved Woman, the first novel in the series.
A beautiful woman commits suicide. When Pia and Oliver are brought together to scrutinize her case, they find signs of foul play. Further investigations reveal that the victim was largely hated and that few people had anything pleasant to say about her.
Pia and Oliver have to wade through an ocean of potential suspects in order to find the victim’s killer.
The Bodenstein and Kirchhoff series is, at its score, a police procedural. Each novel has a case at its center that Pia and Oliver must solve.
The pair initially struggles to find a rhythm in their partnership. They are practically forced to team up. Their disparate backgrounds and the class differences elicit a number of conflicts.
But in the face of murder victims and crime suspects, they find common ground and realize that they are more effective when they cooperate in their efforts to bring justice to the weak and the downtrodden.
Over time, a grudging respect develops between them. However, their work never gets easier. For one thing, each book pits them against some truly horrifying crimes. The cases they come across are very complex.
They have to think outside the box, to detach from their emotions, to go beyond the call of duty to keep their communities safe from the worst elements of society.
If that wasn’t enough, the pair is often overwhelmed by personal matters. Pia is a recently divorced woman who can’t quite make sense of the dating world.
Her emotions are still raw. Sometimes, she is eager to jump right back into the dating pool. Other times, she can’t help but shrink back from any notions of romance that she encounters on the job.
Oliver is supposed to be happily married, but what should be a blissful existence is fraught with its fair share of problems.
Oliver and Pia work hard to separate their personal matters from their professional lives. But that isn’t always easy, especially when the consequences of their work as investigators bleed back into their personal lives.
Your opinion of this series will vary depending on whether you read the original versions or the English translations.
English-speaking fans of the author were initially a little hostile towards the Bodenstein and Kirchhoff series. They thought the prose was lacking and the characters were two-dimensional caricatures that Nele Neuhaus hadn’t bothered to flesh out.
But over time, it became clear that the translations were the source of this animosity. First of all, the first Bodenstein and Kirchhoff book most English readers encountered was actually the fourth novel in the series, a fact that went unnoticed by English speakers for quite a few years.
So they had unknowingly missed all the development laid out in previous books. Secondly, earlier English translations of the series have been criticized by some publishing professionals for failing to adequately represent Nele Neuhaus’ writing.
Bodenstein and Kirchhoff Awards
Snow White Must Die received a Thriller Award Nomination in 2014.
Best Bodenstein and Kirchhoff Books
These novels have been commended for their highly complex mysteries and tense narrative, with some of the best books in the series including:
Ice Queen: An elderly Holocaust survivor was shot to death in his home. The only clue is a number scrawled in blood. Detectives Pia and Oliver are shocked to find a tattoo on the victim’s arm associated with Hitler’s SS.
They begin to wonder whether Jossi Goldberg was truly Jewish. When two more murders take place, Pia and Oliver begin a journey that leads them back to the fires of WWII.
If they can determine what the numbers written in blood stand for, they can find the killer.
Snow White Must Die: Some people think a woman who fell from a pedestrian bridge was pushed. So Pia and Oliver are called upon to investigate.
Now they must figure out how that case connects to the mystery of two teenagers who vanished a decade ago. Everything seems to center on a small village whose inhabitants have refused to shed light on the disturbing happenings of the last few years.
Other Book Series You May Like
You may also like the “Dublin Murder Squad” Series by Tana French. These books follow the detectives of the Dublin Murder Squad as they attempt to confront the demons of the past whilst also fighting the killers haunting the streets of their community.
Another good read is the Ann Lindell Series by Kjell Eriksson. Ann Lindell is a police inspector. She works with other officers in Uppsala, Sweden to solve the crimes, mysteries, and murders that she’s assigned. This is as she tries to pursue a healthy personal life.
What Is The Next Book in The Bodenstein & Kirchhoff Series?
There doesn't seem to be an upcoming book in The Bodenstein & Kirchhoff Series. The newest book is In ewiger Freundschaft and was released on November, 18th 2021.