A slim, utterly absorbing collection of 11 stories plucked from his legal career and told in a cool, patient voice that immediately draws the reader in. NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Ferdinand von Schirach [...] has taken a sheaf of murders and criminal enigmas from his files and, with a sure writerly touch that some critics are comparing to the work of Raymond Carver, transformed them into literary gems. THE TIMES REVIEW
Each tale whips along, a shock at every turn, like some beast with eyes of red- hot coal panting down a forrest track at night. For, courtroom procedure aside, the spirit of the German-language Märchen really drives this book: eerie tales of the uncanny, as practised by Hoffmann, Kleist, the Grimms and even Kafka. THE INDEPENDENT
But what makes these tales stand out are not the extremes of their criminal protagonists but the narrator’s voice: resistant to melodrama, dryly funny [...], never less than human. THE FINANCIAL TIMES
With von Schirach, however, style, occupation and subject matter are rather beautifully synchronized, combining to produce a portraitof crime which is crisply, credibly dramatic. THE CANBERRA TIMES
Every story in Crime has its charme, every one its mystery and its tension, but Ferdinand von Schirach’s real tour de force is beyond doubt to show us that a theft is not always a theft, an apple not always an apple and that, however monstrous his acts might seem at first glance, a human is always a human. LIBERATION
Von Schirach [...] decrypts with diabolic precision the mechanisms that can push a person to commit the irreparable. By the same occasion he invites the reader, in spite of himself, to reflect on justice. LE FIGARO
The novelistic mechanics of these short stories are irrefutable. The author remains in complete charge of his effects, unwinding each narration with a rejection of pathos that owes less to the attorney’s summation than to the simple relation of facts. LIVRES HEBDO
The fascination of these hypnotic texts lies in the stories themselves; but also in the alliance of precise style and subtle psychological analysis that adds its whole charm to a book playing the “petit fait vrai” so dear to Stendhal. TRIBUNE & MOI
Von Schirach’s characters are livelier, maybe because they are more authentic, than in the usual noirs. And they are described in a style which is simple, brisk, with no useless tricks: just touching. LA REPUBBLICA
What we have here, and what in the end lasts, is the voice of a true author, a clear and definite vision of a world of truth and fiction.The style is tense and blessed with an extreme insight, the one of an author with an innate sense of literature which brings von Schirach to write a book that already is one of the major works of recent European literature. AVVENIRE
A masterpiece [...] one of the greatest praises you can give to an author is to compare him to Friedrich Dürrenmatt. In many pages von Schirach reminded me of the moods and stories of that sublime, unforgettable master. CORRIERE DELLA SERA
Schirach writes clearly and simply, as much in command of his subject as if he had never done anything else. He is a magnificient story-teller, because he relies entirely on his characters and their destinies. DER SPIEGEL
The stories – presumably inspired by the author’s own experiences – are subtle, gently written and thought provoking. THE TIMES