Based on the true story of notorious serial killer Peter Kürten and the unsolved murder of Düsseldorf prostitute Emma Gross…
Düsseldorf, 1st March 1929, the dying days of the Weimar Republic. A prostitute is found dead in a cheap hotel room, brutally murdered. But her death is soon forgotten as the city's police hunt a maniac attacking innocent women and children. A killer the press has dubbed the Düsseldorf Ripper.
Detective Thomas Klein's career is going nowhere until he gets a tip-off leading to the Ripper's arrest. But the killer's confession to the hooker's murder is full of holes, and Klein soon comes to believe this is one murder the killer didn't commit. Motivated by spite, ambition, or maybe even a long-buried sense of justice, finding out who really killed Emma Gross becomes Klein's obsession.
Particularly when the evidence begins to point closer to home…
Praise for THE KILLING OF EMMA GROSS
"Damien Seaman takes the real-life investigation of the Dusseldorf serial killer Peter Kurten and uses it as the basis for a fast-paced novel that delves into the dark heart of Weimar Germany. A page-turner that gripped me from start to finish."
—William Ryan, author of THE HOLY THIEF
"…a well written, rapidly paced, gripping procedural …an excellent and deliciously dark crime novel."
—Un:Bound
“With THE KILLING OF EMMA GROSS, Seaman turns lurid fact into brilliant fiction.”
—Kattomic Energy
“Seaman’s writing is brisk and efficient, unashamedly noir in tone. This is a dark book after all, dealing with some contentious subjects under the cover of a police procedural, and featuring a genuinely disturbing serial killer in Peter Kürten.”
—Loitering With Intent
“a must for the fan of the police procedural and even more of an essential read for those fans looking for something with a strong and unique flavour”
—Sea Minor
“Seaman is able to bring you into this setting and time easily, giving you just enough color and lore without bogging down his story with excessive details. He keeps both the mysteries of both “who killed Emma Gross” and “what is Thomas Klein’s problem” tantalizing and their resolutions are satisfying as well.”
—Spinetingler Magazine
"Damien Seaman has written one of the best first novels I've read. An immediate classic, THE KILLING OF EMMA GROSS will be rightly compared to GORKY PARK, CHILD 44 and Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels, it's that good."
—Tony Black, author of MURDER MILE
"A great historical police procedural which fuses fact and fiction. It has as its backdrop the real-life murders carried out by Dusseldorf serial killer Peter Kurten in the late 1920s (and every appearance of Kurten on the page sent a shiver down my spine), but it's about so much more than that and the fictional element is wonderful and full of heart. I loved it."
—Donna Moore, author of OLD DOGS
Killing Peter to Pay Paul
by John Osipowicz
Detective Millard Whitney investigates a murder at a diaper company and soon has a mess on his hands.
A woman comes to Millard and tells him that her husband had confessed to her that he had killed his boss. The problem is that the husband has disappeared. The woman is certain that her husband is innocent and wants Millard to find him. Millard isn’t sure why the woman is exhorting him—does she love her husband, or is it that now she has to walk the dog?
However, the intrepid detective takes the case anyway and does find Peter, the husband. An hour later, though, Peter is fatally wounded, shot to death right in Millard’s car. So “simple” has quickly turned to “complex,” and Millard begins to find plenty of motives for both killings with the diaper company employees.
The company name, “Les-Mes,” is what Millard wishes he had. But he forges forward and runs immediately into “diaper tampering,” with a rival company perhaps having loaded an irritant into Les-Mes’s so-called secret formula. Baby bottoms are getting rashes, and Millard is getting frustrated.
With the seeming help of a company employee Millard tries to come up with his own formula for finding the killer. At times Millard feels like an infant himself, lost in a playground labyrinth, as he also has to deal with King Tut’s hunting knife, Mexican cliff-dwellers, and the Alaskan Iditarod sled race.
Throw in an apparent suicide which probably isn’t one, and the last lullaby that Millard hears could be his own death march.
Little Merrie Callahan is all grown up now.
She doesn't believe in Santa anymore.
But she still has an ax to grind with the man in the red suit.
And, for FBI Special Agent Constance Mandalay, the holidays just went to hell...
MERRIE AXEMAS is a thriller novella with a creepy supernatural twist, straight from the warped mind of M. R. Sellars, author of the award-winning Rowan Gant Investigations series of paranormal and occult thrillers. Although set during the Christmas holiday season, it is an enthralling read at any time of year.
