The Pharmacist - Tapa blanda

Acerca del autor

Ingrid Noll was born in Shanghai in 1935. She read German Studies and Art History in Bonn. ‘Hell Hath No Fury’, her first crime novel, was published to worldwide acclaim. Her reputation as ‘Germany’s Queen of Crime’ was consolidated by ‘Head Count’ and ‘The Pharmacist’, and her novels have now been translated into more than ten languages.

De la contraportada

Would you confide in a woman you didn't know, confess the intimate details of your life? Hella Moormann finds herself doing just this with Rosemarie Hirte, the unknown, unprepossessing woman in the next bed at Heidelberg Hospital for Women.

Hella Moormann has always suffered from a need to nurture lost souls. In childhood, the consequences are harmless, but as an adult the fostering of a series of hopeless men is naturally more dangerous…until, that is, she meets the beautiful Levin, a young dental student who is the heir to his rich grandfather. Hella, herself a pharmacist, is delighted – momentarily forgetting her unerring ability to choose the wrong man.

Soon, though, Levin is taking an unhealthy interest in some old poison bottles Hella has inherited, and planning to use his dental skills in a macabre way. Hella finds that her life is taking an increasingly bizarre course, from involvement with drugs runners to murder, via adultery and much else. But how innocent is she of all this? Is she the helpless victim of fate or a cunning manipulator of events?

Since she is narrating the story, she can slant it as she wishes; but in choosing the anonymous Rosemarie Hirte as her confidante she may have made the greatest mistake of her life, for Hirte has a sinister secret of her own…

'It is impossible to categorize something so completely original…(Ingrid Noll's) gruesomely jaunty account of the lives and deadly exploits of two intelligent, amoral young women in unholy alliance is not a mystery, but simply another riveting novel'
JAMES MELVILLE, 'Ham and High' (of 'Head Count')

'A first-rate example of the Eurocrime novel that focuses on the internal lives of its characters'
VAL MCDERMID, 'Manchester Evening News' (of 'Hell Hath No Fury')

'Ingrid Noll is often referred to as Germany's "Queen of Crime", and her 'Hell Hath No Fury' shows how fully she deserves this title'
DONNA LEON, 'Sunday Times'

'Ingrid Noll has created an appallingly credible character, with whom you can – almost – sympathize as she moves inexorably towards her goal'
SUSANNA YAGER, 'Sunday Telegraph'