David Christopher Roth

Take the next best residential neighbourhood. A man is on the look-out for a victim. Within a couple of minutes, he chooses a young woman. He hunts, stabs and rapes her. As he dwells on his vicious performance of the crime, the residents turn into a dormant audience while they stand by and watch the rapist’s captivating show.

For 25 years, restorer Willibald Adrian Metzger has heard nothing from his former schoolmates. Then he suddenly stumbles - quite literally - over the corpse of a former classmate who had bullied him in a cruel way in his school days. When Metzger arrives at the scene with the police, he can't believe his eyes: the body is gone. Against his nature and spurred on by Danjela's curiosity, the former eccentric organizes a class reunion to uncover the cover-up of the bloody deed. His former classmates are astounded by the eloquence of the actually shy outsider, who uses his sharp mind and great powers of deduction to twist their words around in their mouths...

Irene, the mayor of a Styrian community, also helps her mother and stepfather in their small department store and takes touching care of her 17-year-old brother. But when Paul Berger, an innovative cook, wants to take over the old village inn, wounds of the past break open and a dark secret slowly comes to light...