Foreign Rights

Linus Reichlin

The Desire of Atoms

German Mystery Award 2009



A thrilling, wonderfully straightforward first novel by Linus Reichlin. It's fun to follow him.

Kieler Nachrichten


Since his high-school days Inspector Jensen has been aware of it as a warning: the Helium atom! The Helium atom, as his physics teacher had explained, is not driven by a longing for linkage and doesn't desire symbiosis with any other atom. It is perfect in itself and perfectly alone!

According to Jensen, this consummate example of bonding phobia is not unlike himself. And so he should have been quite pleased when a bizarre twist of the universe beams an extraordinarily beautiful woman to his side. She, however, is blind, rather domineering and doesn't seem very interested– although she is extremely so in the highly mysterious case Jensen is working at the moment. An American tourist had asked for help at the commissariat because he felt threatened. The next day he is found dead in the street. His autopsy indicates a murder not humanly possible. And how are his two ten years old sons involved, who hated their father and have disappeared without trace? Or their mysterious nanny, said to have clairvoyant powers? And last not least: How can amateur quantum physicist Jensen find all that out in his own good time when the beautiful blind woman keeps interfering? The trail leads Jensen not only to Arizona and Mexico but to the limits of the explicable world.