During World War II, Gerhard Zelba was a prosecutor; after the war, he opened a detective agency. Now almost seventy, he keeps himself busy, and every case turns into a major surprise — usually an unpleasant one. A childhood friend asks him to investigate hacking attacks — and for Zelba, who knows nothing about computers but understands people well, a dark secret from the past unfolds, which would be better left as a secret. An unknown client shamelessly demands that he find a missing girl, supposedly his daughter, — and Zelba gets embroiled in a wild race that involves terrorism, phantom and real fires, betrayals, lies, and madness. A chance encounter with a banker brings what seems to be a light assignment — to find a secret partner of the bank — and suddenly people begin to die for unknown reasons, financial machinations are revealed, the mafia emerges from murky depths, someone is kidnapped, everyone is lying, and a battered man knocks on the door with unexpected news, all of which poses a serious threat to Zelba's well-being. It would be hard to endure such a life, were it not for Zelba's abundant charm, self-irony, determination of a born seeker, and the friendship of people ready to support him in the most unusual situations... In 1987, Bernhard Schlink, a respected lawyer and educator, to some public surprise, suddenly turned to the 'light' genre and co-authored 'Justice Zelba' with Walter Popp, then later, on his own, wrote two sequels, one of which earned him the oldest and most prestigious detective literature award in Germany, the Deutscher Krimipreis; numerous awards for his famous novel 'The Reader' were still ahead. Schlink's trilogy about Zelba consists of three intricately woven stories about how horror often lies behind an innocent facade and how the past will always catch up, no matter how far you run.
