Summer by Night

• English sample translation by Simon Pare available
• Recommended for translation by New Books in German (Spring 2020)
• #1 on the List for Best Crime Fiction in March 2020 (FAZ/DLF)
• SPIEGEL bestseller 
• Radio Bremen Crime Award 2020

A child disappears – even though he was only out of his mother’s sight for a few short moments. An investigation begins. The investigators Ben Neven and Christian Sandner try to track down five-year-old Jannis. Witnesses recall seeing a man holding a teddy bear talking to the boy at the elementary school flea market. Ben and Christian quickly uncover connections to a previous case and realize that their worst fears are proving to be true. They find themselves staring down sinister depths. Jan Costin Wagner tells a suspenseful story in his uniquely sensitive and masterfully literary voice. Like a literary profiler, with just a few sentences Wagner sketches razor-sharp psychograms of his characters.

In this first book in a new series, Jan Costin Wagner takes on several explosive contemporary topics simultaneously, stirring up fears that lie dormant deep down inside all of us. The gamble pays off –Wagner is a master of striking a balancing between empathy and restraint and writes literary crime novels like almost no one else.