Sons and Brothers

Kim Hays' second novel serves us a suspicious drowning, ugly secrets, and unresolved romantic tension . . .

Walking his dog along Bern's Aare river on an icy November night, a surgeon in his seventies is hit in the face and thrown into the river to drown. When his bruised corpse is found, his watch is missing. A mugging gone wrong? The more Swiss police detective Giuliana Linder and her assistant Renzo Donatelli learn about Johann Karl Gurtner, the more convinced they are that his death was not random.

Talking to Gurtner's family raises as many questions as it answers, but one thing becomes clear: the surgeon's relationship with his middle son, Markus, was grim. Tracking others who might have had reason to hate Gurtner, Giuliana and Renzo find themselves once again dealing with their attraction to one another and their ambivalence about having an affair.

Behind their investigation, another story has been unfolding. During the year leading up to Gurtner's death, his son Markus became friends with a former classmate of his father's from the village where the two men grew up. Unlike the privileged young Gurtner, Jakob Amsler was forcibly removed from his mother at nine and contracted to live and work on a village farm. From Jakob, Markus learns that his father's early life contains some very odd secrets--secrets that Giuliana and Renzo are now trying to uncover.

Author: Kim Hays
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Published: 04/18/2023
Pages: 362
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.8lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.70w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781645060581


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/0001
Publishers Weekly 02/13/2023

About the Author
Kim Hays is a dual Swiss/US citizen. After years spent in the States, as well as in San Juan, Vancouver, and Stockholm, she now lives in Bern with her Swiss husband. She has worked in a variety of jobs, from forewoman in a truck-engine factory to lecturer in sociology. Sons and Brothers is the second mystery in her Polizei Bern series; the first, Pesticide, was shortlisted for the 2020 Debut Dagger award by the Crime Writers' Association. Kim has a BA from Harvard and a PhD from the University of California-Berkeley.