Review: Put on your running shoes, turn on the tracker—and the horror begins

If you love jogging, you should not read this thriller. Or maybe now. Because what Andreas Winckelmann describes in his new movie “Die Karte” not only teaches eager contestants to fear, but also makes them less likely to turn to accompanying technology. It is also about transparency, data protection and the extent to which privacy is no longer private since the existence of the digital world. The people who produce the data leave traces behind and are spied on by devices that are supposed to make everyday life more convenient.

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Changing perspective makes it exciting

Fitness trackers, for example, are known to every jogger. A device with an application that records exactly how many kilometers have been cleaned, where and the degree of difficulty and with the help of which you can also compare yourself within the community. Is everything safe or what? This is exactly what the story is about, which Inspector Jens Kerner and his partner Rebecca Oswald have to deal with. Young lawyer Eva, a runner, was brutally murdered in the center of Hamburg. Shortly before that, your partner, Laura Windmüller, had received the sentence “You’re running out of time” via the companion app – apparently not written by Eva. Then who was it? To find out, readers not only have to follow Jens Kerner’s arduous investigation, but also delve into some of the characters’ pasts.

While you applaud the inspector, you are simultaneously following the offender’s activities, looking over the shoulders of your potential victims and hoping the killer mug will pass them by. The author does all this by constantly changing his point of view. Of course, the reader always knows a little more than Detective Jens Kerner, whose love life also plays a role, but who is really responsible for all the atrocities, you find out only shortly before the end. Of course, Andreas Winkelmann has programmed sudden twists and turns so that it is finally clear who is behind this series of crimes. And lawyer Eva is not the only one who lost her life in any way.

Not the first case

The novel is already the fourth in the Kerner/Oswald series, but it doesn’t matter if you haven’t read the previous novels. The case itself is closed, and previous knowledge about the investigators is carefully scattered. At home in northern Germany, author Andreas Winkelmann lives near Bremen according to the publisher and has a weakness for activities in nature such as hiking or fishing.

Andreas Winkelmann: Die Karte, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Hamburg, 2021, €12, 382 p.