Böcker av Paul Werner

Laura Forster¿s doing it again. The third volume follows her, with some anticipation, to the Channel Islands, in the Bay of St. Malo. Here, she is busy unveiling a dark secret ultimately harking back to the German occupation during WW II. The focus of her investigations lies on the history of the legendary Yarmouth Six: a jolly band of six young expendables recruited from a notorious "juvie". Under the leadership of an inexperienced lieutenant straight from Sandhurst, they are to mount a "pinprick" commando raid on the heavily mined little island of Sark. A suicide mission, obviously, that soon runs into heavy waters and comes very close to a fubar end. One of the recruits drowns; others sustain gunshot wounds. When, finally, it¿s each man for himself, the generalized confusion gives rise to a fair number of dreadful, shocking, but also rather hilarious episodes, laughter being deadlier than bullets. Once the war is over, the six survivors, who had narrowly failed to become the terror of the Nazis, decide henceforth to take better care of Number One by founding a brotherhood of crime, which, in turn, is to become the terror of the British Isles. All of that is a lot of water under the bridge. Or is it? A long and bloody trail appears to be leading from the six graves to a mysterious present-day murder spree. When, in the course of his vendetta, the killer shoots a certain Solveig by way of collateral, he¿s made a bad mistake. Young Solveig happened to be the first great love-affair of Laura Forster¿s adoptive son, Ignace. And God knows, the Forster family is not in the habit of taking such things lying down...

Whereas Yellow Dancer took Laura West to the Caribbean, Yilan makes her go East, to the Greek Aegean, where both she and her indomitable sister Solitaire follow the tracks of Süleyman the Silent who kidnaped Lauräs adopted son Ignace. It¿s a desperate race against time and a hallucinating dance around a much-coveted legendary icon of the Virgin Mary that proudly carries the scars of revolutionary turmoil both in fledgeling modern Greece and a chaotic Soviet Union in the making. As always, Laura, a staunch agnostic herself, is firmly wedged between all fronts, Orthodox and otherwise. Undaunted, the unlikely twin sisters accept the challenge of a showdown in a giant long-abandoned and half decrepit wooden orphanage. Situated on the largest of the Princes¿ Islands in the Marmara Sea just beyond the pale of Istanbul, the solitary orphanage is said to be resounding with the laughter and cries of kids occasionally, on calm and quiet nights...

In diesem zweiten Band der "L.-F."-Trilogie wird eine als erfolgreiche Unternehmerin und Ziehmutter des kleinen Ignace jun. gereifte Laura Förster aufs Neue von ihrem Erzfeind Hakan dem Leisen aus ihrer Hamburger Komfortzone aufgescheucht. Diesmal geht es auf der Jagd nach der legendären Ikone der Erschossenen Madonna, für deren Wiedererlangung weder Griechen noch Russen und schon gar nicht der so mysteriöse wie skrupellose Verbrecher, der sich die Schlange nennt, vor Mord und Totschlag zurückschrecken. Erneut gerät Laura nicht zuletzt durch die Intervention ihrer "schrecklichen" Schwester Solitaire zwischen die Fronten und wird diesmal kreuz und quer durch die Ägäis gehetzt. Die packende Handlung kulminiert in der Stadt der Städte, dem irrlichternden Schmelztiegel europäischer, arabischer und asiatischer Völker, Religionen und Kulturen namens Istanbul. Von den Ufern des Bosporus nur einen Steinwurf entfernt, liegt das "vergessene" Archipel der sogenannten Prinzeninseln im Marmarameer. Auf deren größter, Büyük Ada, befindet sich ein riesiges hölzernes, inzwischen halb verfallenes griechisches Waisenhaus. In diese unheimliche Arche der Verlorenen Seelen müssen Laura und Solitaire sich zur Geisterstunde begeben, um den tödlichen Showdown mit der Schlange zu bestehen.

Has corporate business overtaken the art world? It's no secret that art and business have always mixed, but their relationship today sparks more questions than ever. Written in a witty and argumentative style, this book describes the art conglomerates from an insider's perspective, probing how their roots run deep into corporate culture.