The fourth in the Black Forest Investigations featuring Louise Boni - by the four-time winner of the German Crime Fiction Award

At first nothing seems to link fifteen-year-old Eddie, a bit of a loner who finds solace swimming in the dangerous waters of the Rhine, and Nadine, a rich but bored student from Freiburg. Except for the fact that both disappear without trace, within days of each other. When Eddie's body is found, suspicion first falls upon his brutal and uncooperative father. But when Nadine's own father raises the alarm, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Boni of the Freiburg police instinctively feels that the cases are connected.

An abandoned barn near the river soon becomes the focus of the investigation, beginning a trail that will lead Boni and her team across the Rhine to Colmar, confronting them with the grim secrets of outwardly respectable citizens. Sometimes it takes very little to unleash the monster in man.