When I read Andrea Maria Schenkel's The Murder Farm, I was reminded of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It wasn't just that the stories were similar--both dealing with families murdered on isolated farms, but Schenkel's writing style also gave a firm nod in Capote's direction. The story was slight and succinct drawing on various sources and viewpoints to create a portrait of a tragedy. It had the same sort of documentary-style narrative that Capote used so successfully, though in Schenkel's case the story she tells is a purely fictionalized account of a murder based on an actual incident. From what I understand this is also the case with Ice Cold (Kalteis), her second novel, which I was eager to read. The Murder Farm was a dark and chilling story, so I was fully expecting Ice Cold to be equally so, but I'm afraid I was less impressed this time out than last. As much as I like crime fiction, Ice Cold was too disturbing for my tastes.
Schenkel chose well when she named her serial killer Josef Kalteis, as ice cold is just the sort of person he seems to be. The story opens with the execution of Kalteis who supposedly has murdered a number of young women in Munich. The murders take place in the 1930s, during the Weimar Republic, which the Reich considers to be a blight on German history. Executing Kalteis is paramount to removing a cancerous sore, though whether such abhorrent crimes have come to an end under the new regime is questionable.
Once again the story is told through several different viewpoints. There is a straightforward third person narrative, but interweaved is the transcript of the interrogation of Kalteis as well as what appears to be eyewitness and family accounts of the various missing women. Most of the story, however, focuses on one young woman named Katharina Hertl, Kathie, who has traveled from Wolnzach to Munich to look for work. She finds living in a small town boring and doesn't get on well with her parents, but arrives in Munich without a job or even a place to live. She falls in with a distant friend who seems to be involved in questionable activities, though it's never really clear just what they are. The women seem to spend most of their time beer halls where Kathie meets a number of men, one of whom will turn out to be Josef Kalteis.
Kathie's story is the fullest and most complete but the murdered women are also given short vignettes. These sections open with an eyewitness account but then switches to a narrative of the crime. There's the suggestion throughout the story that Kalteis has been wrongly accused of the murders, though by story's end there doesn't seem to be much doubt that Kalteis is depraved and guilty of something. In addition the reader gets the perspective of Kalteis's wife, which unsurprisingly doesn't quite match the answers he gives in his interrogation. Friends from childhood the two meet as adults and have a brief romantic liaison which results in a child. Eventually they marry, but he's not what he appears. It's the usual story of a man who beats his wife and then claims to be deeply sorry for his actions, until it happens again, which of course throws everything he has to say about his behavior into question.
And then the murderer, whether it is Kalteis or not, gets to share his thoughts, too. And this is where I began having problems with the story. Often enough an author will allow the reader into the mind of a killer, and it's almost always a terribly uncomfortable place to be. In the case of this story, it's not just uncomfortable but downright disturbing made more so by the fact that the killer also happens to be a serial rapist. Reading his reprehensible thoughts felt gratuitous to me, and had they come earlier in the book I might not have been able to finish reading.
I suspect Schenkel is trying to push the limits in this genre, and the spare prose style and multiple viewpoints is somewhat unusual and maybe even a little innovative, but this time around the story felt too thin. I like the set up of the story, the narrative style, but (for me anyway) there just wasn't enough explanation/fleshing out of the story to support the behavior of Kalteis, Kathie and the other women. Part of the reason I like crime novels is the psychological insight into the characters and what motivates them, and how it all reflects on society. I think there was a missed opportunity here to expand more on the period and place, which would have been fascinating to read about.
Unfortunately this story didn't work for me. It mostly left me feeling slimy and in need of a hot shower after being in the mind of a murderer and rapist. I will note, however, that Ice Cold is superbly translated by Anthea Bell, whose work is really exceptional.