** spoiler alert ** I like Jan Costin Wagner's prose style (at least in its translated form) but I'm not so sure about his insistence on switching point of view between pursuer and pursued. I thought it worked okay in Ice Moon (his first English-translated novel) and in The Winter of the Lions (his third) but in this novel, for some reason, I didn't feel any empathy with the pursued , even though it is clear from the narrative he didn't actually commit the crime himself. Apart from this minor irritation, I enjoyed the premise of the story(despite a key plot element being slightly ludicrous) and the main detective is a likeable, interesting character. I'm disappointed to have finished all three available books by this author and I'm rather looking forward to the next one.