Silver Pebbles - by Hansjörg Schneider (Paperback)

About the Book

"First published in German as Silberkiesel by Ammann Verlag, Zurich, 1993."--Title page verso.

Book Synopsis

The second in the series featuring Basel police inspector Peter Hunkeler. An elegant young Lebanese man carrying diamonds in his bag is on the train from Frankfurt to Basel, a drug mule on the return journey. At the Basel train station, Hunkeler is waiting for him after a tipoff from the German police. The courier manages to get to the station toilet and flushes the stones away. Erdogan, a young Turkish sewage worker, finds the diamonds in the pipes under the station. To him they mean wealth and the small hotel he always wanted to buy near his family village. To his older Swiss girl-friend Erika, employed at a supermarket checkout counter, the stones signify the end of their life together. She knows that Erdogan has a wife and children in Turkey. For the courier, finding the stones is a matter of life and death. His employers are on their way to "tidy things up". For Hunkeler the stones are the only way to get to the people behind the drug trade. They turn out to include not only the bottom-feeding drug gangs but bankers and politicians very high up the Basel food chain. This is a tale of ordinary people accidentally caught in a vortex of crime, like Hank and Jacob in A Simple Plan by Scott Smith or even Guy Haines in Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. Unusually, and refreshingly, no one gets killed.

Review Quotes

"He's an incurable pessimist with a big heart. Hunkeler has become a cult figure. He walks through life with great appetite and thirst." Kulturtipp, Zurich

"This silver pebble is in truth a literary gem."Die Presse, Vienna

"Schneider's crime novels are addictive. As soon as one murder is seemingly solved, you are yearning for a new scoundrel. An obvious sign of addiction! Tages-Anzeiger, Zurich

"Schneider has created a wonderful protagonist: gnarly, edgy and sympathetic. " Hamburger Abendblatt

"Not a word too many, but also not a word too few". Rheinische Post