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 has always suffered from a need to nurture lost souls, fostering a series of hopeless men until 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's life begins to take 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…

"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'

"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 & High' (of 'Head Count')