Helden der Nacht

KARL WOLFGANG FLENDER
HELDEN DER NACHT/ HEROES OF THE NIGHT
A Novel, ca. 384 pp., Autumn 2018

Noir fiction, diagnosis of today’s world and complex game with literary role models.

Karl Wolfgang Flender relishes in dissecting our belief in today’s world and progress – a furiously told, astute and funny social satire.

What remains when we’ve disenchanted the world? An insanely good novel about the absurdity of today’s world.

WHAT SHOULD WE DO IN A WORLD WITHOUT SECRETS?

Ever since childhood, Bryan Auster has had an obsession about honourable men with trench coats and hats. Detectives like his father, boss and sole employee of the Auster Detective Agency. Bryan is forced to take over the agency when his father ends up in a convalescent home with a bad back.
Inspector Coleen McCollum is a marked cynic. She hates the daily grind, her useless colleagues, and increasingly her relationship, which has run out of steam. But she’s still very serious about investigating.

Naturally Colleen and Bryan meet. And the case that they end up working on is much larger and more monstrous than either of them could have possibly envisaged.
‘Heroes of the Night’ is a virtuously constructed, realistic, nail-biting novel, in which Karl Wolfgang Flender once again proves himself to be a brilliant narrator. At the same time, it is an eternally poignant book about idols and dreams, about a father-son relationship that needs to redefine itself. About people who pick themselves up from what life has thrown at them and carry on and start again.

›It is surprising that pop literature [...] suddenly reappears with this book, attaining a new level of critical relevancy.‹ Jan Wiele, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on ›Greenwash, Inc.‹