The Vanished Smile
A trade fair. Thousands of strangers. One woman who never makes it home.
A trade fair. Thousands of strangers. One woman who never makes it home.
Twenty-three-year-old Sandra Walter vanishes after an industrial fair in Hanover. Detective Marlena Ritter takes a case that at first looks like a single disappearance.
Then her team finds a pattern.
Women from different parts of Germany, missing in different years. The cases were never linked, but they share one ordinary detail no one thought to treat as a pattern: major trade fairs, changing cities, and crowds large enough for someone to remain invisible for decades.
The deeper Marlena digs, the closer the investigation comes to her own past. One trail reaches back twenty-two years — to her mother’s disappearance.
A psychological crime thriller with Nordic-noir elements, The Vanished Smile opens the Marlena Ritter series with a case that becomes impossible to keep professional.
One case ends.
One question remains.
Each novel resolves its own criminal case, while the first three books continue the personal thread running through the series: the disappearance of Marlena’s mother.
Die ihr Lächeln verloren
Ein Fall für Kommissarin Marlena Ritter · Band 1
German edition →