Changes

|title=A Wolf in Hindelheim

|sort=Wolf in Hindelheim, A

|publisher=Hutchinson

|date=May 2013

|summary=A slightly woolly debut, but this is definitely an author we'll see more from, as she takes us to a specific place and time, yet provides an ageless, universal look at men made outcasts by both their past and the future.

}}

Germany, the 1920s. Whatever that old proverb is about an ending of something merely being a beginning of something else in disguise, this novel is an evocation of it. In the rural habitation of the title a father and son pair of policemen is called to a remote house by news that a newborn baby is missing. In the house is an awkward combination of families – elderly matriarch, her son and daughter and both their spouses – two couples living on top of each other, with a disabled boy and maid in the mix too. We soon are given an explanation for the child being dead – a terrible instance of clumsiness, but like I say, this is only the beginning – of several things, including the older policeman's infatuation with the grieving mother's sister-in-law…

More damaged WWI victims can be seen in [[The Cocaine Salesman by Conny Braam]]. Soldiers returning to small-town life are also behind the brilliant [[Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel]].

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