Trost und Rath – Tanz mit dem Teufel (2024)

Graz detective Armin Trost regularly drives his superior, Balthasar Gierack, and his colleague Reinhard Hinterher to despair with his unconventional investigative methods. After Trost is once again suspended for interfering in a hostage situation on Graz’s Mur Island, musician Josef “Sepp” Tiefenbrunner dies at an event honoring Moritz Montblanc, a star of Styrian folk music whose real name is Fritz Weissenberger. According to the doctor, it was a heart attack, but Montblanc has found a suspicious piece of paper. On Gierack’s orders, Detective Annette Rath investigates Tiefenbrunner’s death; according to Trost, she is supposed to prove that Tiefenbrunner really did die of a heart attack. Meanwhile, Trost investigates on his own and undercover. He introduces himself to Montblanc as journalist Schober, who wants to write a book about musicians in Styria. Rath has Tiefenbrunner’s body exhumed. The autopsy shows that the heart failure was caused by the poison of the red foxglove. Monsignor Schmitt identifies the piece of paper found on Tiefenbrunner as the remains of a baptismal certificate. Montblanc began his career alongside Sepp Tiefenbrunner, Franz Fadlbauer, who now works as a music teacher, and Karl Magnus, who took over his father’s farm. Hellwig Stocker is now Montblanc’s manager and lyricist. At Tiefenbrunner’s funeral, Montblanc argued with Karl Magnus, whose body Armin Trost finds. He may have fallen down the stairs in his house, but a wound on his head suggests that someone else was involved. Annette Rath finds an envelope containing around €100,000 at Karl Magnus’s home. Hilde Tiefenbrunner, Sepp’s widow, also had such an envelope at his funeral. Weissenberger was seen in Magnus’s home village on the night before Magnus died. Montblanc’s fingerprints are on the envelopes, suggesting that Tiefenbrunner and Magnus may have been blackmailing him. Trost and Rath suspect that Fadlbauer may be the next victim, and Rath arranges police protection for him. She suspects Montblanc of murdering his former bandmates Tiefenbrunner and Magnus, but has no proof. Fadlbauer tells Trost that Weissenberger’s mother was from Bled, and that they used to tease him about it. After a nighttime ritual when they were teenagers, Weissenberger unexpectedly broke up the band, to the other three’s surprise. Trost goes with Fadlbauer to visit Moritz’s grandmother, with whom he grew up. She had disapproved of his band, which called itself the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Hellwig Stocker had wanted to join the band back then, but was rejected—supposedly because there were only four horsemen of the apocalypse, though Fadlbauer says it was because Stocker was overweight. Stocker confesses to Trost that during that nighttime ritual, he appeared to Weissenberger as the devil after the band had rejected him. Stocker had threatened him, prompting Weissenberger to break up the band. Montblanc owes his entire career to Stocker, who made him a star. Now Weissenberger wanted to get out of his contract with Stocker. Before Stocker can be arrested for the murders of Tiefenbrunner and Magnus, he takes his own life.