Truly smart who dunnit starting out 11 years after the crime with the release from prison of the young man found guilty of the murders of 2 teen age girls. Right from the outset we know there is something rotten in Denmark but with all the red herrings, it takes a while to sort it all out.

Missing the Eurostar: European crime in English translation is a sub-culture in itself but this German bestseller misses the zeitgeist. It can tick all the boxes for moody, possibly psychologically disturbed tecs and prurient, sexualised killing, but somehow since Saga Noren and The Bridge, we've needed more. Scandi crime on the box has raised the game and a tepid American translation won't do. Dial nein, nein, nein.

I'm not the type of person that pushes through bad books but for some reason I did with Snow White Must Die. I was initially intrigued by both the title and the story but that quickly went away. My biggest gripe with Snow White Must Die are the major plot holes. Within the first hour the novel wants you to believe some pretty huge blind leaps of faith.

Combine that with some murder mystery staples, memory loss, famous actress, towns people, and this just felt like your run of the mill murder mystery. I'm not sure what the early praise was for this book because I just didn't get it.

Did not see that coming... Or that... Or even that. Interesting roller coaster of a whodunit!

Didn't realize it was book #4, still a good read. Could have ended a tiny bit faster for my liking

In ‘Snow White Must Die’ by Nele Neuhaus, Detective Inspector Pia Kirchhoff is about to embark on one of the saddest cases she has ever run across. Unaware of tragedies she will unearth, she is called out to view the bones of an unknown individual discovered in an old underground jet fuel tank on a former military airfield at Eschborn, Germany. Her partner and boss, Bodenstein, hasn't been himself lately, and Pia finds herself taking the lead on the case as secrets begin to unravel.

Another body, seemingly unrelated to the discovery at the airfield, brings both detectives to the scene of a 7-car collision in Sulzbach, caused by the attempted murder of a woman pushed off of a bridge into traffic. She barely survives with multiple injuries. Tracing her movements back to her car, they learn her name is Rita Cramer. From her apartment and her answering machine, phone numbers lead to Cramer's doctor, her ex-husband, and the small town of Altenhain.

Everybody knows everybody in Altenhain. Families have lived there for generations. Almost everybody works on some level for the same man, Claudius Terlinden, owner of half of the town. The town feels fortunate that Terlinden takes care of them all. Especially since Tobias Sartorius has returned on release from prison to his father's Altenhain house.

Tobias has finished serving a ten-year term for the murder of two beautiful local girls whose bodies were never found. Despite there being only circumstantial evidence, most people are satisfied that Tobias is the killer, and they are not happy that he has come back. The town decides he will not be permitted forgiveness, although Claudius is oddly supportive of the murderer. Tobias himself, unable to remember what happened that terrible night when the girls disappeared, does not want to be there, but he finds his father has divorced his mother and he has lost his restaurant business because of the disappearances. Tobias begins to restore his father's rundown house to some livability.

Several things happen in quick succession: Kirchhoff and Bodenstein inform Tobias that the woman in the hospital who someone had tried to kill is his mother. The skeleton found at the airfield was one of the murdered girls. There is no way he could have driven her there. Acts of vandalism begin to happen to his father's dilapidated home, which soon escalate into more dangerous threats. Four old friends seem to accept him without reservations, but weirdest of all, he has met a newcomer to the town, a waitress, Amelie, who looks exactly like one of the missing girls, with Snow White coloration and beauty....

I found 'Snow White Must Die' a little stilted, perhaps because of the translation, but I quickly became accustomed to the occasional awkwardness. It is a police procedural, European style. The fact that this is written by a German author was a cause for great curiosity on my part. I've never read a book written by a German writer that wasn't on a 'Great Books' list, as in the classics author, Thomas Mann. So I was eager to read this on that point alone!

Hooray! It was good! Complex, full of twists and turns, a town full of possible suspects and so many motives the reader might need to diagram the possibilities out, it is an interesting read. Alliances and (im)moral influences have been amplified by the usual small town anxieties and unexamined gossip.

I think it was very European in that it included a lot of details on the officers' personal family life that one almost never sees in American police procedurals. Here in the USA, fictional cops are usually extremely damaged and depressed, unable to hang onto any relationships for long without causing their loved ones maximum destruction. In European mysteries, cops are supported more by community and friends. There is more formality, but it is an easy going kind of formality. Individualism isn't as pronounced or emphasized as in American detective mysteries. 'Snow White Must Die' is not a cozy, though. There is rape and nightmarish murders, as well as a town full of individuals who are operating more as a lynch mob protecting personal interests rather than honest citizens seeking justice.

This is not a book which the reader should set down too long before picking up again, though. The 'red herrings' and variety of characters are numerous and tangled, ensuring confusion if left too long unread. I don't think it is helpful that it is book four in a series, either. Backstory information on the police is compressed and quickly told, although I wasn't lost by the swift review. It works as a standalone.