Trost und Rath – Das große Schlachten (2025)

Graz police inspector Armin Trost and his colleague Annette Rath investigate their second case. Since Trost has planned a three-week vacation, Rath is supposed to work with Reinhard Hinterher, known as “the Count,” instead. Because Trost had a large backlog of unused vacation days, Ms. Sattmann approved his leave even though he had missed the application deadlines. At Rath’s request, their superior, Balthasar Gierack, recalls Trost from vacation. After 30-year-old journalist and court reporter Alena Stadler is found murdered on a tennis court, it emerges that a similar crime features in the chapter “The Heart Ripper from Übelbach” in the bestseller The Great Slaughter, which describes the worst crimes in Styrian history. The recently published book may have served as a guide for a copycat killer, although, unlike the victim in the book, Stadler was not a sex worker. Hinterher had recently given Annette Rath a copy of the book. The victim’s heart had been removed and is found in a nearby basilica. It was wrapped in newspaper bearing an article written by Stadler in which she criticized the book. In the story in the book, the hearts were wrapped in pages from the Bible. Rath learns from Alena’s parents that one of her professors, Cornelius Tadelmann, the book’s author, had groped her. The rector had swept the incident under the rug. Tadelmann had failed Stadler, and she had then abandoned her studies. She may have wanted to get back at Tadelmann with her newspaper article. The professor has no alibi for the time of the murder. Hinterher sets out to find a user who posts insider knowledge about the case in an internet forum about the book under the pseudonym Ripper. Professor Migutsch had taken Stadler’s side against Tadelmann. Both Tadelmann and Migutsch want to become dean. Migutsch criticizes Tadelmann’s work as unscientific. Stadler wanted to reopen her case. Migutsch also has no alibi for the time of the murder. Professor Tadelmann is in the process of divorcing his wife, Sonja, and is involved with student Sandra Schubert. Soon afterward, Migutsch is found murdered; according to the forensic pathologist, it is likely to be the same killer. Migutsch choked to death on his own tongue. A similar case appears in Tadelmann’s book: a merchant from Graz who was murdered for defamation. Sonja Tadelmann has not signed the divorce agreement with her husband because he sold the book rights to an American streaming service without making provision for himself in the divorce agreement. Before marrying Cornelius, Sonja was in a relationship with Markus Migutsch. Migutsch had failed Sandra Schubert, giving her a motive for murder, as did Professor Tadelmann. Hinterher tracks down the Ripper, who turns out to be a retired employee of the university library. Soon afterward, Sonja Tadelmann becomes the third murder victim. Unlike the first two victims, she was not sedated. The book includes a case in which a woman had spent all her husband’s money and then wanted to leave him. Her husband had stabbed her to death. The police then search for Professor Tadelmann, and his lover Sandra Schubert has also disappeared. His computer contains flight bookings to Havana. Trost suspects he plans to go there because Cuba does not extradite people to Austria. In the book, the victim was killed with 21 stab wounds, whereas Tadelmann’s assistant’s original notes record 12—the same number of stab wounds with which Mrs. Tadelmann was killed. This rules out copycat killers and means that the killer must have known the original documents. The book was supposed to be the basis of Tadelmann’s assistant’s habilitation, but Tadelmann had fobbed him off with a one-time payment. The assistant had tried to frame Tadelmann for the murders. Rath suspects, however, that Tadelmann’s assistant committed only the first two murders. He himself seemed surprised by the third; perhaps Tadelmann had killed his wife because of her high demands. Sonja was also killed by a left-handed person, whereas Tadelmann’s assistant is right-handed. Another suspicion is that Tadelmann’s assistant also killed Professor Tadelmann and merely faked his escape. In Gösting, Tadelmann’s assistant throws himself to his death from the tower of the Gösting castle ruins. After Professor Tadelmann signs his book with his left hand, and since only he has insider knowledge of the original number of stab wounds, he is exposed as his wife’s murderer and arrested.