Reviewed for Euro Crime by Lynn Harvey:

She leaped up. “I don’t booze, for Christ’s sake!” The sentence resonated in her head, just as the footsteps crunching in the snow had echoed the night before. I don’t booze.

Saturday morning, Liebau, Germany.
It’s snowing. Hollerer glances out of his kitchen window just as a shaven-headed monk, dressed only in dark robe and sandals, appears out of the driving snow and makes his way along the street. A vision sent by my wife, Hollerer thinks. Some time later he recalls that the monk had been bruised about the head – perhaps not a vision. He buttons his police uniform over his paunch, fetches his service weapon from the bedside table and sets out to find the monk. At the steps of the village church a crowd including the mayor are gathering around the young man sitting cross-legged and silent, his bowl in front of him. The villagers are unhappy and want him gone. No begging is allowed after all and he could be just a forerunner for other cult members to come. Hollerer buys food for the monk who, by gesture, insists on sharing it with him. For now, annoyed by the mayor’s insistence that he do something, Officer Hollerer retreats.

Saturday morning, Freiburg.
42-year-old Kripo detective Louise Boni wakes up to snow. She hates it. Everything bad that has happened to her has happened in the snow. Her boss rings to call her into work but she refuses. His next phone message threatens disciplinary action and Louise takes her time calling back. Something strange is happening in Liebau, no-one else is available so Louise must go and take a look. Too hungover to drive, she takes a taxi and by the time she arrives in Liebau the monk has left – with Officer Hollerer following him in a patrol car. A young patrolman, eager to display his own “rally-driver” skills, gives Louise a lift to where Hollerer is parked in a white wasteland watching a black dot moving slowly up a hill. Louise and Hollerer follow the monk on foot but soon the overweight policeman reaches his limit. Louise borrows his gun, continues alone and eventually catches up with the monk. They walk in silence and later, helped out by supplies of food and warm clothing ferried by Hollerer and the young patrolman, Louise and the monk enter the forest where they shelter for the night. She establishes that he is Japanese and can understand English but he remains largely silent. Louise, caught up in alcohol-fuelled thoughts and haunted by images of her dead brother, divorced husband and the man she killed, eventually sleeps – waking to the grey light of dawn and the sound of a man’s voice. The monk is wide-eyed with fear, gesturing for her to follow him. They hide until full daylight when the monk resumes his journey.

Louise hands over the task of following him to the day shift, Hollerer and a colleague from Freiburg. The young Liebau policeman drives her back to the Freiburg headquarters. The ensuing argument with her boss is fierce. Louise wants back-up, cars and a helicopter. He wants her on enforced sick leave, “rehab” and a planned return to a desk job. In fact he insists that calls for back-up and helicopters based on “the hallucinations of a piss-head and the wanderings of a half-naked foreigner” are out of the question. Louise returns to her desk and asks her new Liebau colleague to start compiling a list of the nearest Buddhist institutions. Her boss interrupts and orders her home: “You’re on sick leave”…

ZEN AND THE ART OF MURDER is the first novel in Bottini’s "Black Forest Investigation" series and won a Deutsche Krimi Preis when it was published in 2005. Full of psychology and a wry wit, this story deals in the dark matter of child trafficking and murder. Louise is shut out from the official investigation, but stubbornly continues to prise open the riddle surrounding the terrified monk and his pursuers. But not before another death in the snow has shattered her fragile state. In Louise Boni, Oliver Bottini has created a convincing anchor – a woman flailing around amidst the clink of empty bottles; keeping a desperate grip on her self and her career through gut instinct and persistence. In fact Louise’s interior life provides almost as much suspense as that of the hunt for the killers. Bottini’s well-written characters bring humanity to the events and the story reads smoothly in Jamie Bulloch’s translation. This edition includes a short story prequel which fills out the details of the previous case that still haunts Louise.

Greatly recommended, particularly for lovers of the uphill struggles of the lone detective. A classic Nordic Noir set in the snows of a German winter.

I was a fan of the TV version of Zen and felt slightly disappointed when it came to this book. I was really intrigued with what was going no in the early part but i found the more i progressed with the book the more i lost interest with what was happening. The female character introduced in the first couple of characters was interesting and she made me push through a bit further.

Suffering from PTSD following the shooting of a paedophile, recently divorced police officer Louise Boni is struggling. She is assigned to what seems a simple if odd case, to follow a Buddhist monk who is wounded and trailing through the Back Forest in the snow. When her team come under fire from unknown assailants Boni is thrown into a case involving child traffickers.

There is quite an interesting plot underneath all of this. However I found myself getting confused with characters and the actual start of the book didn't grab as quickly as it ought.

I read the synopsis of this book and I thought that I simply had to read the book. I studied German at university and I absolutely love most things German. As part of my year abroad I stayed not far from where the book is set and so I thought that I might be familiar with some of the place names. I enjoyed this book but more about that in a bit.
Detective Chief Inspector Louise Boni is a woman fast approaching middle age. She is already divorced. From reading the book and picking up on the little clues, it appears that she has been through some pretty horrendous times and as a result she has been left mentally scarred. You could say that she is haunted by what she has seen and what she has heard. DCI Boni seems to have a gut instinct about things, which frequently brings her into conflict with her immediate superiors. She requests more help or presents her theories but her superiors don’t listen to her and refuse her requests. As is so often the case, DCI Boni uses alcohol as a coping mechanism and as a result she has become a bit too fond of it. Boni is described as being a maverick, which she is because if she doesn’t agree with her superiors she does her own thing. I get the impression that Boni is a tortured soul and she has an internal monologue that she has to do battle with on a daily basis. Boni is far too hard on herself and she is her own worst critic. This book sees her reflect on her own life and she becomes interested in Buddhism, as she chases the Buddhist monk across the snow.
This book is well written although a couple of times I did wonder if something had been lost in translation or if the translation was a bit clunky. That just could be the German student talking in me though and after all I am the one who hasn’t used the language since I graduated all those years ago and so it could be me that is rusty and clunky. It took me a little while to get into the book but by the end of the second chapter I was away with the story. I wouldn’t say that I became totally addicted to the book but I was sufficiently interested to be able to go back to it to read more and to finish it. I am a nosy devil and so I need to know what happens, who, where. why and so on. The author certainly knows how to create a dramatic and tense situation. Whilst reading the book, there was the occasional time where I didn’t want to turn the page as I feared what was going to happen next. The descriptions of the area and the people were so vivid that if I was to shut my eyes I could imagine that I was there in the middle of the Black Forest and listening to the hustle and bustle of German daily life. The descriptions of the cold weather and the snow were so vivid that I felt very cold and shivery, whilst I was reading the book.
In short I did enjoy this German tale and I would recommend it to others. I enjoyed reacquainting myself with the Black Forest and it has made me more determined to pick the language back up again. The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is 4* out of 5*.

The book starts off well with a monk walking through the snow covered village of Freiburg moving through the countryside towards the forest. You get a good sense of atmosphere and that continues during the monks travels. The local police chief calls for help from the Black Forest crime squad even though there does not appear to have been any crime committed. Chief Inspector Louise Boni is sent. Louise walks with the monk, who has clearly been hurt, and stays in the forest with him overnight. It is intriguing.

Louise carries on looking into the monk but her boss wants it finished with. Then there’s a shooting, a death and the monk goes missing. Louise is allowed to carry on. Through this is the issue of Louise’s drinking and being allowed to continue the investigation is agreed provided she sees a psychologist to help with her drink problem. A problem that has been getting worse since Louise’s marital problems and a previous case.

As the investigation continues there are even darker issues that arise. Louise gets suspended but continues looking into what has become a child trafficking ring. There is pace in places and some tension. This is a book which I enjoyed. I liked the fact that it finished after the conclusion of the immediate investigation so you learnt a bit more about what happens. However what happened to the monk, sadly, remained a mystery I know that’s sometimes, indeed, often the case in life but I was disappointed.

We are treated to a prequel short story at the end it helps with some of the background and might have been useful to read first.

It is the first of a series of six books, listed below, which it seems will be translated from the original German into English. So we will get the opportunity to get better acquainted with Louise and her colleagues. I think it may well be worth it.

Rating: 3.5*

https://www.librarything.com/work/2515096

I would like to thank Netgalley and Quercus Books for an advance copy of Zen and the Art of Murder, a police procedural set in around the Franco-German border with Chief Inspector Louise Bonì as the protagonist.

Louise is called out to help the Liebau police deal with a wandering Buddhist monk. The monk is obviously injured and frightened but refuses help and keeps walking so there is nothing they can do but observe. Louise spends the night in the forest with him and comes to suspect that he is being followed and in danger. How this all pans out is the meat of the novel.

I found the first few chapters of this novel absolutely captivating. The cold calm of the forest is so expertly described I could feel the cold and stillness. The puzzle of how to act and what to do with a man who doesn't want help is beguiling and the sense of helplessness is pervasive. It's all very unusual, atmospheric and enticing. The pace is leisurely and adds to the atmosphere. So far, so good and then the focus changes to Louise, her problems and her lone wolf investigation. After that it is a fairly run of the mill crime novel.

I think I might have enjoyed the novel more if I had liked Louise but the actions, alcoholic visions, nightmares and thoughts of a functioning alcoholic don't interest me and the character study of her and her journey, which is the main focus of most of the novel, just made me yawn. Through in some explanations of the Buddhist way of thinking and the crime element gets a bit lost.

Louise is 42 and divorced. She appears to have had a troubled adolescence and had to shoot a suspect a couple of years ago which preys heavily on her mind. She is a sensitive soul and has turned to drink in an effort to cope with life but it's catching up with her. Her superiors are on to her, she has no real friends and is very obviously lonely. It's all a bit clichéd but, at the same time, amorphous. I found her a difficult character to understand or grab hold of. The author very helpfully includes, at the end, a short story about the shooting which haunts her. Maybe I should have read it first.

Zen and the Art of Murder is not a bad book, in fact I like the linear timeline, third person narrative, the flashes of humour and the opening chapters and I will certainly give the next book in the series a read, but the concentration on Louise and her character are not to my taste.

This is an offbeat German crime thriller set in the borders of France and Germany. Chief Inspector Louise Boni is in her forties with the Freiburg Serious Crimes section run by Rolf Bermann. She is divorced from Mick, and her brother, Germain is dead, she shot Rene Calambert dead after he abducted a young girl. Louise is unable to negotiate the travails of her life without liberal helpings of alcohol, associates snow with the worst traumas of her life, and constantly sees the ghosts of the dead and those still alive. A badly injured monk, in inappropriate clothes and sandals for the weather, is walking through a small village, the locals panic thinking he will bring trouble and attract hordes of other foreigners. Local cop, Hollerer gives the monk food but fails to communicate with him but stays with him. Louise is called to the scene, and follows the monk, spending the night with the fearful and traumatised man. She senses that something is seriously wrong, and that the monk is in deadly danger. This is supported by the sighting of men in a car in the forest. Louise tries to set up a rota to protect the monk with locals, Hollerer, a young cop, Niksch, and Lederle, from Freiberg Serious Crimes.

However, Louise's boss Bermann does not acquiesce to her request for more help. Tragedy ensues with a cop shot dead, a critically injured Hollerer, and the disappearance of the monk. Louise is forced to go off sick whilst she addresses her issues with alcohol. Bermann and others believe the monk is the prime suspect, unconvinced by Louise's conviction that others are responsible. Louise fears the monk is dead, and looks into Kanzan-an, a buddhist monastery with the help of Richard Landen. Boni's investigation has her travelling back and forth across the border, ignoring orders to not get involved. She follows the thread of Asile d'enfants, who share the Kanzan-an, a charitable organisation that places orphan children from the Far East and Thailand with new adoptive families. Louise finds her life in danger as she uncovers a network of human trafficking, set up to sexually abuse and exploit children.

Amidst the high drama of the criminal investigation, Louise is drawn into the thinking and philosophy that lies behind Buddhism in her search for identity and address the wreckage that is her life. She becomes obsessed with Landen and his marriage to the pregnant Japanese Tommo, harbouring lustful thoughts of him whilst instigating sexual encounters with the younger Anatol, a taxi driver. Louise is the child of a Frenchman and a German woman, she is warm, wild, sad, original and a woman facing the abyss which accounts for her interest in Buddhist theology. This is a wonderful and entertaining read, and I loved its wintry setting in Germany and France, for which Louise with her dual background in the two countries is the ideal protagonist. I hope Bottini's other books in the series get translated soon, cannot wait to read them. Many thanks to Quercus for an ARC.