Killing and Lying

In 2000, student Angelika R. was murdered in front of her dormitory in an Austrian university town – with a single stab to the heart. The perpetrator has never been found. Sixteen years later, Angelika’s mother seeks out Jan Halder, a fellow student with whom Angelika was in love, out of the blue. She accuses him of knowing more than he told police at the time and of possibly being the murderer. Jan, now a mediocre writer in the throes of a creative crisis, has just moved to a small town to get his life in order again. The haunting memory of the murder compels him to return to his former campus and reconstruct the crime once more – which is problematic, since Jan is a notorious liar who has constructed a truth even for himself. When he meets the blogger and activist Haddah, who is investigating the murderers of two South African students, the two of them realise that they are onto a conspiracy. Whether he wants to or not, Jan must face the truth, because by now the perpetrators of his past have set their sights on him too.

»No other Austrian crime writer creates such amazing underdog stories.« Peter Huber, Die Presse

»With Killing and Lying, André Pilz once more presents a terrific novel that looks at the sore points to which the white majority likes to close its eyes.« Martin Spiess, Zebrabutter

»Pilz does not intend to shock, he wants to give a wake-up call. To do so, he uses all the means available to him as an author and gives his story tremendous power.« Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Man Down