Carlsbad
March 2019, 350 pages
Available material: English sample, German sample
A gripping, suspenseful and terrifying murder mystery.
Karlovy Vary, better known abroad as Carlsbad, is a beautiful and somewhat sleepy real spa in western Bohemia, located on a river flowing through a picturesque valley. Something nasty, however, happened a couple of months ago and now it has occurred again: a visitor to the town has been viciously bitten by another tourist who committed suicide shortly afterwards. Both cases are similar, but neither the perpetrators nor the victims had anything to do with each other, they were complete strangers. A sense of terror looms over the cool colonnades and hot springs as guests begin to cancel their reservations, threatening to bankrupt the whole town. The deputy commander of the city police writes to Julian Uridil, his former friend from school, now a famous mystery writer living in Prague, and begs him to come back to his hometown and help solve the crimes that are so similar to those in his books. Julian arrives in Karlovy Vary and discovers a detail the police overlooked: at each crime scene somebody has left a photograph of a seemingly dead girl covered with false tattoos…
From the sample translation
“After all these years Julian had finally returned. Even if just for a bit. All because of a letter. When he stepped off the bus he realized his hatred for his hometown had disappeared. Off in the distance, he could smell the hot springs, the minerals, that salty subterranean scent. No, he didn’t. What bullshit. Who knows what he smelled. He just didn’t want to feel indifferent. That’s not why he’d come. Immediately he began doubting his decision. Where was the swell of emotions? Nowhere. Even negatives ones would be fine. But… nothing. It was just some town in western Bohemia. He may as well have arrived in Plzen or Stříbro or Cheb.”