Kaltherzig: Thriller (German Edition)

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To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Woman of the Dead , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Dann findet sie Tonaufnahmen auf dem Smartphone ihres Mannes, der Polizist war: Niemand will Dunja glauben. Und jetzt auch Blum, die zunehmend der Verdacht beschleicht, dass Mark deswegen sterben musste. Sie sucht nach Antworten… Und dann sucht sie nach Rache. In meinen Augen ist "Totenfrau" ein Thriller, der polarisiert. Nein, was ich so polarisierend finde, ist die Hauptfigur: Ihre Ziele fand ich nachvollziehbar.

Kann man - darf man! So polarisierend das ist, so faszinierend ist es meines Erachtens auch. Spurte sie einmal nicht, wurde sie in einem Sarg eingeschlossen. Ich fand sehr originell, wie hier die Erwartungen auf den Kopf gestellt werden. Fand ich Blum liebenswert? Fand ich alles gut, was sie tat? War sie eine interessante Protagonistin? Heftige Emotionen kamen in vielen Szenen gar nicht bei mir an. Dialoge, die aufs absolute Minimum reduziert werden.

Da sind nur sie und der Himmel. Was von ihr noch bleibt. Eigentlich ist es fast eher ein Psychodrama als ein Thriller, aber ich fand das Buch unglaublich spannend. Trotz einer eher gradlinigen Handlung konnte ich mich der Anziehungskraft der schwierigen, oft skrupellosen Heldin der Geschichte einfach nicht entziehen.

A dark and disturbing tale of vengeance and violence, Woman of the Dead is the first novel by Bernhard Aichner to feature Blum, mother, mortician and murderer. When Blum's beloved husband is killed in a hit and run she is nearly destroyed until she learns that he was deliberately targeted. The photographer, the cook, the priest, the huntsman, and the clown - these are the men responsible, and Blum is going to make them pay.

Woman Of the Dead has one of the most memorable character introductions I' A dark and disturbing tale of vengeance and violence, Woman of the Dead is the first novel by Bernhard Aichner to feature Blum, mother, mortician and murderer. Woman Of the Dead has one of the most memorable character introductions I've ever read.

The story opens with a during a defining moment in Blum's life before leaping forward eight years to place us in the present. Blum is the devoted wife of Mark, a police detective, the doting mother of their two young daughters, and the owner of a successful funeral business. She is both hero and anti-hero in this story, grieving widow and ruthless killer. There is raw and visceral emotion in The Woman of the Dead. The pain and numbness of Blum's grief and the horror of the abuse Danya experienced at the hands of the mysterious cabal.

There is also grisly and often explicit violence, this isn't a story for the squeamish. The plot is quite straight forward, perhaps stretched a little thin at times. It's a fast paced story that builds suspense, though astute readers shouldn't have any problems guessing the identity of the last man standing. Woman of the Dead is an unusual story, with a rather extraordinary protagonist.

I'm curious to see how the series develops. Dec 04, Sam Clues and Reviews rated it really liked it. For all my reviews, check out Clues and Reviews https: She has a successful business, after taking over the family trade as an undertaker. When her life is shattered by the sudden loss of her husband, Blum goes deeper and deeper into despair and reignites parts of her past to help her seek revenge. How For all my reviews, check out Clues and Reviews https: How far would you go to avenge the one you love? Read more… Woman of the Dead is a crime thriller, and the first novel translated into English, by Austrian writer Bernhard Aichner.

According to the synopsis, this novel is the first in a trilogy about the lengths that one will go to seek vengeance and struggle between good and evil that exist in all of us. This book is a dark and intense. I devoured it in a single afternoon. Blum and her husband are going through their typical morning routine, when, on his way to work, he is struck by a car outside of their home and dies instantly.

The driver escapes leaving Blum's world shattered. They contain a woman who describes her torture and rape over a five-year period by a group of five masked men: She takes on the task of hunting down these men and making them pay for what they have done, not only to that woman but also to her husband. This one opens with a bang and the action does not stop. Aichner is able to write a story that is so deliciously twisted and completely original.

This novel is cold and clinical; I loved this. From the first moment her character is introduced, the reader realizes how complex this character is. This narration style made the story that much creepier! Soccer mom meets vigilante psychopath.

Blum is the ultimate anti-hero. This novel will not be for everyone; it is very graphic. But, if you are a crime fiction aficionado and want to read something completely original, you must add this one to your TBR list! I will be waiting anxiously for the next in the trilogy to be translated into English.

Otherwise, I may just have to learn German… I received a copy of Woman of the Dead through Goodreads Firstreads. I really enjoyed Woman of the Dead. Though I have a gut feeling that they may be quite similar. The events of Woman of the Dead are told in the third person point of view following the character Blum. You are with Blum the whole time as she figures out who each of the men are. Therefore, we don't really get to much insight into what the other characters are thinking and this adds to the mystery.

I also felt that the twists to the story added to it's unpredictable nature and I was completely taken by surprise when the identity of the final man was revealed. The conclusion was definitely climatic and everything tied together nicely. I was sitting on the edge of my seat as I read. The chapters were also quite short - around 4 to six pages but some as short as 2 pages. This gave the illusion that it was fast paced yet still included great descriptions. Woman of the Dead was also a fairly easy read as the language used was quite basic and easily understood.

This is probably due to the translation of the story from German. I also had an odd experience with the character Blum. I really liked her yet she was a complete and utter psycho. Her secret, which is actually revealed in the prologue, is something I found really shocking. And her revenge is just so gruesome and brilliantly described.

Her job as an undertaker also provides her with the resources to commit the perfect act of revenge in quite a terrifying manner. Yet it is clear that Blum has so much love for her husband, Mark, and children, Uma and Nela. She is devastated when Mark is killed and is almost comatose in the days following his death. It is clear that Blum has amazing support behind her during this tough time, especially from her father-in-law, Karl, who helps take care of the children despite his old age and her assistant, Reza, who keeps her business running whilst she grieves.

I would definitely recommend Woman of the Dead.

Lau, Frederick 1989-

Jul 01, George K. Feb 18, Tien rated it really liked it Shelves: This is a very different book though quite good on its own merit. The story opens with a very chilling prologue —which I adored call me crazy, if you like but the main story takes place 8 years after this prologue.

And things could not have been more different; the readers are greeted with a happy domestic scene. This, of course, did not last for more than a few minutes. The rest of the book alternated between feeling numbed and deepest anguish. She is not an experienced sleuth. She is not a trained assassin. She is an undertaker. She lashed out from fear and for revenge. As Anton explores the new environment, he meets Katja and David who seemingly live alone in a neighboring house.

Gradually and unsuspectingly, they draw Anton into a dangerous vortex of emotional confusion, where sexual overtures, subtle seduction and surprising violence all play a part. Anton finds himself on the other side of an appalling reality he could not have imagined. Das hat ihm auch den Spitznamen "Simpel" eingebracht. While Markus clings onto the past and cannot come to terms with the loss of his wife, his fifteen-year-old daughter Kim runs away to Denmark with Alex, a cool guy who has dropped out of school, and visits the setting of her childhood.

Together with his mother Gerlinde and her lively carer Paula, Markus sets off to search for his daughter and so embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Due to his hearing impairment, the sensitive boy recedes more and more into his own world. One day, however, a schoolmate is intentionally poisoned and dies. At first Rico doesn't care but soon learns that the attempt was initially targeted on him. Completely unsettled, he finds no support from his mother or her boyfriend whom Rico detests.

Eventually Rico develops a friendship with his German teacher Wegner, who is also an outsider and serves as something like a father figure to the boy.

View all 55 comments. Feb 04, Steelwhisper rated it did not like it Shelves: No, I didn't read it. This is not at all representative of what happened, especially not for what happened to the survivors of concentration camps, or Mengele's experiments.

Meaning of "Thriller" in the German dictionary

It's the wet dream of someone inordinately fascinated with these atrocities instead. What revolts me there is not the fact that someone might wank off over Mengele and his victims, there's always that. What revolts me to the point of actual physical nausea is No, I didn't read it. What revolts me to the point of actual physical nausea is that people read and clearly end up thinking--as documented in their reviews--that this is what had happened.

No it hadn't and wasn't. Not even close to it. It doesn't even come close to what reverberates down the generations. And I'm not in the slightest sorry to say: Far far better alternative reading material are the poems of Paul Celan or any of the authentic survivor accounts, I Was A Doctor In Auschwitz is a good start. For those who still haven't realised it, I have very personal reasons for disliking the abuse of Auschwitz, Mengele and his victims to prop up a weak story lacking in content and expertise to being one of Nazisploitation. Whilst I haven't read "Schadenfreude" that doesn't mean I don't know what's in the book.

Someone read it for me and recounted it, so I won't be triggered by it. I did read the author's "Hero's Torch", which--as has been stated by more than one reader of both books--is as good as a blue-print for "Schadenfreude" minus the Nazis and Mengele. So there is absolutely no way this one tops the blue-print, given how much the author fishes for shock effects.

View all 29 comments. Oct 31, Nile Princess rated it really liked it Shelves: The 'true love' tag by the author is a bit of a stretch, but wow! This book is psychological genius. That someone can be so broken and bleeding and hurting and ache to be with the person inflicting the pain, and to have the author explore this so proficiently But, I'm jumping ahead.

Schadenfreude is a story about a German boy who is arrested by the SS and taken to Auschwitz b The 'true love' tag by the author is a bit of a stretch, but wow! Schadenfreude is a story about a German boy who is arrested by the SS and taken to Auschwitz because he is a homosexual. There, he is taken under the wing of Ahren Kaltherzig, a doctor who engages in horrific experiments to 'understand how homosexuals work' in an attempt to supposedly 'cure them'. The irony is that Ahren is, of course, homosexual himself The story follows the experiments and the attempts to 'break' and discipline Erich, but this is tempered by the fact that, even from the beginning, Erich has it much easier than his counterparts.

He is given the comforts of Ahren's home and bed if he's good , is given typing and sewing duties and is surprised with little gifts from time to time. Best of all, he is 'protected' by Ahren and we see a few instances where Ahren comes to his defense against the attentions of a rival doctor who seems to think Ahren is coddling Erich. Kaltherzig had a polite threat of his own. Though Ahren refuses to acknowledge his growing feelings for Erich, we are privy to times where he allows Erich to kiss him, and the times he cries when he thinks he won't be able to take Erich with him when the Russian and Americans invade.

Still, it's not all peaches and cream. Ahren possesses a vicious inner darkness that manifests itself when he's drunk which is a lot as things go downhill for the Germans and which never spells good things for Erich. I don't want to share more. You'll have to read it. Those of us who are not big on medical torture will have to suffer through a few chapters, but the rest of the read is well worth it.

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Also, please note that Erich is 15 when he is first captured View all 47 comments. Nov 22, Danny Tyran rated it it was amazing Shelves: How hard it will be to read anything else after that and to find it good. This book could have been titled "Submission and Indifference as Survival Skills in War Times", so the main character, Erich, submits totally to the will of his torturer, Kaltherzig which, by the way, means "cold heart".

Even for the reader, the beginning of this novel is a shock requiring a lot of resilience. Does "resilience" is synonymous with "submission"? In any case, the author immerses us in the WWII world of Block 10, where, after been there once, you never want to go back, because what happens there is total horror.

Indeed, what place more terrible than the laboratory at Auschwitz where Mengele was "working"? Which will allow him to survive. Erich will be the witness of all sorts of horror to become as indifferent to the fate of his fellow prisonners as his own torturers. Is it not he who said he preferred to work in the morgue because it is less noisy? Of course, since the morgue corpses do not scream in pain. Autopsies were so much quieter.

This is not the kind of novel I usually read, so that cold cruelty to unwilling people troubled me a lot. I had nightmares one night when I went to bed after several hours of reading this book. But the author has managed to captivate me enough for me to read the novel to the end. I wondered what happened to Hitler's Youths. Did not they all become "Kaltherzigs", as indifferent and cold as him, using gifts to compensate for their cruelty? Even when he is "saved" by the Russians, Erich does not feel better treated than by the Germans. The freedom to scrub at his eyes made it worse. The following paragraph, describing what he did after he injured himself voluntarily, is very revealing of what he felt: Wonderful, sick, invisible defiance.

And the last blaze of that made him pull his blanket around himself and step out of bed and slide underneath it instead. He fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the floor. Erich speaking of men in general: The only negative note is the strange use that the author makes of punctuation. I wondered if it was voluntary, but what interest would there be to punctuate a sentence this way: And Schadenfreude means Glee. View all 20 comments. Dec 05, Dusti Hanrahan rated it really liked it. Review posted This will be one of my hardest reviews It may be less of a review and more of my feelings.

I have lost sleep over my rating and, still, I sit here writing and deleting and starting over and over w review.

Translation of «Thriller» into 25 languages

I was appalled by it yet fascinated, I was disgusted yet intrigued and somewhere along the Review posted This will be one of my hardest reviews I was appalled by it yet fascinated, I was disgusted yet intrigued and somewhere along the way, without knowing, I quit caring what I was supposed to feel and We are introduced to a young German boy, Erich, who is sent to the camp for kissing another boy.

Upon arrival a Dr at the camp takes a 'liking' to him and the story centers around the experiments, devices, punishments and domination that this Dr forces on Erich. In the beginning I was disgusted and horrified at the events taking place within the pages, knowing that they so accurately represent history in so many ways. At some point, without my knowledge, I was able to open myself to the story unfolding and, although still horrific at times, I found so much strength and passion within the pages that I was left utterly speechless in the end.

This journey is not for the faint of heart or easily offended. We are thrown into the depths of hell and despair but somehow, in the end, we are left fully sated and dare I say emotionally enamored and full. I need Xanax and vodka and therapy! View all 21 comments. Apr 08, Joan rated it did not like it Shelves: This is about the fourth or fifth attempt at writing a review for Schadenfreude. Each time I start I am consumed with rage and my words become little more than an outpouring of anger at the sheer vileness of this story.

All I can say is that, if you respect those who died in horrific circumstances in Auschwitz and in the other camps and you honour their memory, if you are filled with revulsion at the thought of someone glorifying the atrocities committed there, then this book is not for you. It This is about the fourth or fifth attempt at writing a review for Schadenfreude. It most certainly is not for me. I finished reading with a sick feeling in my gut that is still there whenever I think about the story.

On a purely technical note, the writing feels immature and totally haphazard in places, the use of pronouns is erratic, and I had the feeling that the whole story is little more than an excuse to mock those who suffered. And that is one star too many. View all 9 comments. Dec 04, MLE marked it as your-ignorance-is-showing.

Jul 06, Willow Madison rated it it was amazing. I struggled with my review for this one. So I had to ask myself, what the f ck am I struggling with here? The answer was pretty simple: I wanted to make a statement. That speaks for itself. Much like a pro on a corner, you get what you pay for. So, no qualms there. I heard about it from a Goodreads friend and saw enough comments and threads on GR topics to know that I was a wet c nt for what it had to offer. But the setting — historical, WW2, concentration camp, filled with factual events and monsters…and most importantly, most controversially…all too real victims that may have very well suffered in much the same way as the fictitious characters do— is one that had me pausing still.

I braced myself to hate this book and the author with such a fury that could only come from a myopic understanding of the history. So I went into the sample with a good dose of trepidation and a solid bias. That is, before I read the sample. The writing is exquisite. Yes, this is a horrifying, excruciating, and detailed description of what is recorded as one of our greatest times of evil. Yes, there are no punches pulled with the descriptions or events. Yes, the main character, Erich, is a sheltered and fragile boy in the beginning.

I fell in love with the writing. I fell in love with the characters. Yes, both the main characters. I fell in love with their love story. That is what this is to me. I know others balk at calling it this, but I do not. So my struggle with a review came down to wanting to make a statement, one that others might read and decide for themselves to give this book a go.

Love always is, no matter the pains. A final note on art. There is a museum in Berlin that uses architecture much in the same way this book uses words. I visited it on a gloomy day, not cold, not warm, perfect really. One side of the museum is sleek and modern, jarring with its angles of white wall expanses set at odd pitches. No right angles exist to make for easier steps.

Set into regular spots, black cubes pull attention like highrise windows, pressing closer is the only way to see the drop. Oddities and artifacts, handwritten letters and smeared postcards, everyday items and simple belongings, this is what is inside each black cube. This and a date and place of murder. This is some of what remains of generations killed by the Nazis.

Moving past the cubes, there is a massive door that is opened by a museum worker; shy danke is given in various accents, or only polite nods. Once the door is shut, the light and sound and temperature change. There is no unnatural source for these things.

One small slit of an opening at the very very top is all. Intimate and ghastly, eerie and grounded, unnerving and normal. Death cries and street noise. I left in a rush, angered by my earlier eager politeness with the damn door. I wanted to kick it off its hinges so it could never close again.

This book did this to me. The very realism of it informed the way I felt in equal part to the imagery 19 used in creating the fictitious. I'm no closer to a proper review. This is more of a dedication when one finally comes My brother recently passed.

Morphine addiction and HIV complications got the better of him finally. His birthday would've been this month. I'm particularly permeable right now and in need of a connection with him. This is a book he would've loved.

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I long for the discussion that will never take place. We always had that in common. I'll be reading this again with the BDSM group My brain is still whirling and I finished this over a month ago. I want to re-read it, but I'm afraid of what that says about me ; Who am I kidding. The era that was chosen for this tale was poignant and excruciating.

It wasn't extraneous or frivolous. If it had been, I would've started the bonfire myself. The characters haunt me. View all comments. View all 5 comments. Mar 03, Eleonora rated it did not like it.

Synonyms and antonyms of Thriller in the German dictionary of synonyms

Actually I didn't finish this story entirely, I just couldn't. I know this is supposed to be fiction but for me there is just too much truth behind the story. Growing up as a German you get confronted with the Nazi history at a quite young age, I think I was actually traumatized when my teacher showed us a video of Nazis shoving men,women and children into a church, then locked it and burned it down with the people screaming inside it. After that you get through years of history classes learning t Actually I didn't finish this story entirely, I just couldn't.

After that you get through years of history classes learning the unbearable,agonizing thruth of what people are capable of doing to other human beings. You are forced to read plenty of books which are describing every sick detail of what happened to the people imprisoned in the KZs. So I was quite fed up with the whole Nazi,Hitler,third Reich- thing. So why did I start reading this story? I have this thing for " guy gets captured by another guy a little bit of bdsm and then the turning point where they start to slowly connect with eachother bla bla etc.

Like in Special Forces where Vadim rapes Dan but through the books you get to know the whys and you feel the genuine emotions they have for eachother. And you know it's fiction. But in this story you read about a doctor who is a sadistic monster who enjoys inflicting pain on a helpless 15 year old.

And there is no way I could imagine that Erich the boy could feel any emotion towards Kaltherzig funny name btw, means cold hearted beside deep hatred. They were just totured and killed. So I hoped the author ,thinking he must be German, would handle the things diffrently ,to use the setting of that time but to tell a story with emotions,and understandable actions on the part of Kaltherzig.

But for a long time in the stroy there was no such thing just a torturer and a rapist. I felt like the story tried to make the crimes which were comitted during that time into something less horrible. So one star for the writing and one star for the historical correctness. Sorry for the grammar and the length of this "review" ; July , someone liked my review and a saw the book has a cover now, because of the cover I dropped the rating to one star , I can't believe someone could use the Hakenkreuz on top of something squiggly , like this sign doesn't stand for the death of 55 million people.

And in connection with the title it is just sick. I don't know if the people who rated this book high know what the word Schadenfreude really means, it means you are excited or happy that someone suffered. Put a Hakenkreuz under the word Schadenfreude and you are just sick. For all the 55 million victims,of Nazi crimes, who died a gruesome death, this is just I don't have words for that. Sep 12, Lori rated it really liked it Shelves:

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