Crvena ružica
A cult German "lady crime novel" and one of the biggest bestsellers of the 1990s in Germany, "The Red Rose" is the first book by Ingrid Noll, with which she became the founder of the "Hausfrauen-Thriller" genre.
The main character and narrator is Hella Moormann, a seemingly ordinary fifty-year-old woman from Heidelberg – quiet, a bit boring, a bit mean. After her divorce, she lives alone, works as a pharmacist and is obsessively in love with the younger doctor Levin Gregor. In order to keep him all to herself, Hella begins to systematically remove all “obstacles” – first Levin’s unfaithful lover Rosemarie, then her own sister who kidnapped her ex-husband, and even random acquaintances who bother her.
She carries out all her murders with poisons from the pharmacy (digitalis, insulin, cyanide in coffee), always with a cold smile and a perfect alibi. She keeps a diary in which she justifies her crimes with love: “If someone had to die, at least they died for the right thing.”
Noll masterfully builds tension through Hella’s naive-mean monologue – the reader simultaneously despises and understands the murderer. The humor is black, the irony is sharp, and the ending (the courtroom in which Hella almost wins) is shocking.
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