I Am Your Judge by Nele Neuhaus - 4.5 Stars

[Olivermagnus]

This is the fourth book in the police procedural series featuring Pia Kirchhoff/Oliver von Bodenstein series by German author Nele Neuhaus. Pia is just about to go on her honeymoon with new husband, Christian, when a sniper kills a woman out walking her dog. Her boss, Oliver, is unavailable so she decides to fill in for him until he can get to the crime scene. Before long a second woman is assassinated. Margarethe Rudolf was making Christmas cookies in her kitchen with her granddaughter, when a shot comes through her kitchen window, killing her immediately. Pia struggles with deciding whether to stay to help with the case or go on her honeymoon. Additional shootings take place and the sniper sends obituaries to the victims' family, leaving obscure clues. The family members all have secrets, which makes the motive difficult to discover. In addition, many of the team are missing from a horrible flu that's running rampant through the police station.

This book has an extremely complex plot and readers unfamiliar with the intricacies of German names might have a problem with a slowing down of the suspense. The discussion of the evidence goes on a bit repetitively too. The translated series has been published out of order but I didn't feel like it was detrimental to the story line. I would still recommend reading one of the earlier books to familiarize yourself with the characters since most of them appear in all of the books. If you like your mystery novels deep and complex, you will absolutely enjoy I Am Your Judge.

[Tien]

I really enjoyed the mystery in this one. It's the only book I read out of the series so there were some personal details of the characters that threw me off a bit (with the timing between divorce and getting into relationship with other people etc) but otherwise, great thriller.

[Olivermagnus]

Tien wrote: "I really enjoyed the mystery in this one. It's the only book I read out of the series so there were some personal details of the characters that threw me off a bit (with the timing between divorce ..."

I'm glad you liked it. I think she has thee others that need to be translated, in addition to the four that are already out.

[Margaret]

This looks good. I'll have to look for this series.