Case No. 4 for Thomas Schöngeist takes him to Chile

• Softcover
• with flaps
• 320 pages

978-3-86638-387-6

20.00 €           

A new mandate in Chile awakens wistful memories of a passionate love affair with a German-Chilean woman for Thomas Schöngeist, a lawyer from Würzburg known from three adventures. The love story, which drew Schöngeist into a maelstrom of contemporary events during his law studies and also made the cultural differences with María Pilar, the granddaughter of a Jewish dairy entrepreneur who fled the Nazis, seem insurmountable, did not have a happy ending.

A dark secret that has never been fully unravelled is hinted at. A German-Jewish family saga that begins in Lower Franconia under the swastika and experiences a dramatic catharsis on the night of Salvador Allende's election victory in Chile. An intricate espionage thriller unfolds in which not only Augusto Pinochet's secret service Central Nacional de Información plays an inglorious role, but the American CIA, the West German BND and the East Berlin Stasi are also part of the historical game.

The author of the Schöngeist series from Amberg, who knows Würzburg because he himself studied psychology and economics here, and who became a lover of South America because he began a sabbatical here and then spent time with his company in Santiago de Chile - Siegfried Schröpf spreads out a complex panorama of German-Chilean history of the murderous 20th century.

HERE the German Hand-out describing the new book; THERE a Spanish Version for our publishers colleagues in Latin America ...

Also for our spanish-speeking partners we can offer the first 5 chapters in Chilean Spanish HERE.

An undiscovered murder case

• 308 pages
• Softcover in brochure with gate-folded covers
• The third Schöngeist economic crime novel

978-3-86638-182-7

An undiscovered murder case draws Thomas Schöngeist in the Silesian past

For the third time business lawyer Thomas Schöngeist becomes a detective – he encounters a murder from the World War II period in Breslau, which is apparently connected with the suicide of a powerful entrepreneur of today.

Breslau in the freezing winter of 1945. A member of the Hitler Youth observes a murder committed by an exalted party functionary. He does not dare to report his observation. A human life is no longer worth much in the city declared as fortress by Gauleiter Karl Hanke. But who is the author of the diary, in which this crime is documented?

This fate of an individual in the confusion of the confederate final offensive is the historical background for the third Schöngeist-thriller. Siegfried Schröpf skillfully intertwines murder, escape and identity theft in World War II Breslau and the tragic suicide of an entrepreneur-personage from the Silesian metropolis fled into the West to a gripping crime novel with socio-critical thoughtfulness.

About 65 years later and about 600 kilometer further west in the wintry Würzburg lawyer Thomas Schöngeist gets into the vortex of the Silesian past. Shortly after the suicide of the corporate patriarch Klaus Bronski, his son-in-law Peter Schneider disappears. By order of Helma, Peter's wife, the lawyer from Würzburg takes up the trail in the common birthplace Blaukirchen, where he quickly encounters inconsistencies.

In the last months Peter was vilified there as profiteer and fraud, then even pummeled by a East European goon squad. On top of that Helma finds an erotic love letter.

Is Peter really up and away because of an affair? Schöngeist cannot imagine this. New evidence point to Breslau. More than one reason for paying the Silesian metropolis a visit.

Economic crime novel, the first case

• 176 pages
• Brochure with gate-folded covers

978-3-86638-133-9

12.00 €           

»Grasshoppers« threaten a family business, financial machinations endanger jobs – lawyer Schöngeist survives an attempted murder.

Part 1 of the Schöngeist trilogy

He shakes the head: There is always some dark secret. But then it stays a secret. Once again he takes a look at the photos. Who is this woman?

Although Thomas sometimes would like to run away from the chasms he divines, he begins to become deeply absorbed in this case.

»One cannot just watch how the company goes down the chute because of a money-grubbing, delinquent banker.«

Schöngeist's second criminal case, economic crime novel

• 272 pages
• Brochure with gate-folded covers

978-3-86638-134-6

16.00 €           

In his second case lawyer Thomas Schöngeist flies to Argentina – being on the scent of an international case of corruption and old Nazi-money.

Was there something to the myth of the rat line after all? Money, which was transferred from Germany to Argentina across this connection already after the war. Were these old channels still existing? Or maybe the then sewer rats?

The sun was burning in front of a cloudless sky and warmed her skin, but the longer she waited, the more she shivered again. Where has he gone? She typed his number into her cellphone and heard her own call ringing out of the bathing bag, which was standing beside the deckchair.

»I fear there is a huge vortex gaping, which is dragging you into depths, I do not want to get to know.« Maybe this is just what tempts me, thought Thomas ...

After the first part »Schöngeist« this is the second part of the Schöngeist-trilogy!

Short story of an encounter in Barcelona during the spanish civil war

• 48 pages
• Series »16pages«

978-3-86638-132-2

7.00 €           

Barcelona in the year 1938: One year after the bombing of Guernica, which was captured with all of its horros on painting by Pablo Picasso, one year before Franco's accession to power two people meet in the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War. They know each other from their school days in a Spanish village.

»Marina« is a short narrative, in whose 25 parts Siegfried Schröpf intertwines an abduction with a flashback into prewar Spain: Mateo recalls his school days, dreams of his childish affection towards his former teacher in a bitterly poor country village, his childhood in the mountains around Barcelona – while he is trying to survive a torture by Franco-supporters. Because only when he is silent he saves his beloved, who he finally met again after many years ...