As of: January 26, 2024, 1:00 p.m
By: Tanja Brinkmann
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Venture into the Munich underground: The author also went into the sewers when researching “Hellfire”.
© Michaela May
First it was right-wing extremists who took Jewish children hostage.
Now it is Islamists who are carrying out a cruel attack on the Munich subway.
Peter Grandl presents his third, frighteningly realistic thriller, “Hellfire”.
Again, he is primarily concerned with the question of how fragile democracy is.
District
– Two high-rise buildings, smoke, chaos.
Nobody forgets the images broadcast worldwide on September 11, 2001.
Two planes, which the terrorist network al-Qaeda first hijacked and then turned into flying weapons, crash into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York.
Huge fireballs bear witness to this.
Another target: the Pentagon in Washington.
Around 3,000 people die that day.
A turning point in the conflict between the Western and Arab worlds.
And cruel evidence that the Islamist attacks have reached a new dimension.
More than 300 dead: city sinks into a state of emergency
The danger that Germany could also become the target of such attacks has become even greater due to the Hamas attack on Israel.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution warns of attacks by radicalized Islamists.
You can't even imagine what could happen.
Peter Grandl does it.
In his new thriller “Hellfire,” the author, who has made his home in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen district, deals with terror in the name of Allah.
The sun is shining, a wonderful morning.
People drive to work, to school to shop.
A man moves through the subway with a pressure sprayer, the type used for pest control.
He keeps saying, “It’s just water.” A lie that briefly reassures people.
Then chaos breaks out on subway line 6.
It's a horrific attack.
Doctors and other experts have been in the dark for a long time about which substance.
The hospitals are full.
More than 300 people die.
The city is sinking into a state of emergency, the world is looking at Germany in horror.
In the background, the authorities and police are working feverishly together to catch those behind the attack and prevent another attack.
They venture into the sewers, investigate the mosques and soon arrest the Syrian doctor Laid Abaaoud as the main suspect.
Peter Grandl created a horror scenario in his thriller.
© Florian Fischer
For First Chief Inspector Torge Prager, who is leading the investigation for the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe, this is a clear case.
Of all people, Antonia Himmel, the great, unhappy love of his life and daughter of the Interior Minister, believes in Laid's innocence.
What almost escapes both of them: Antonia's father, Martin Himmel, was supposed to be on the subway that morning.
Was the attack aimed at him?
Uncomfortable feeling after reading “Hellfire”
It's an oppressive scenario that Grandl has designed.
The author is once again concerned with the topic that already concerns him in the tower series: “the fragility of our democracy”.
If such a terrible attack happens, what happens next?
This question drives him.
Suddenly there is a call for a strong hand.
“The colossus of Germany is shaking” is the headline in the Times on the eighth day after the attack.
“Nothing better could happen to the AfD.” A danger that he makes frighteningly clear to his readers.
It is also clear that such a scenario suddenly exhausts all the gray areas of the justice system.
“When it comes to interrogations, a lawyer is not immediately called in,” says Grandl.
There are exciting 480 pages that he offers in his third thriller.
Anyone who gets on a subway after reading this will initially have an uneasy feeling.
Even manhole covers through which the masterminds of the attack disappear are suddenly looked at with completely different eyes.
“We don’t need to get paranoid.
But we must be clear that our democracy cannot withstand everything.”
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It's not just the Islamists who concern him.
“I shoot against everyone who commits crimes in the name of their religion.” The double standards of the Catholic Church are also a topic that his Interior Minister Himmel fits into.
He really has “a lot of dirt on his hands”.
This is his downfall, especially when dealing with his son, who takes a surprising and very frightening path.
“His sister will definitely be looking for him,” says Grandl.
But he doesn't let anything else get out of him.
Before he dares to make a sequel, he waits to see what happens in the world.
After all, the stuff his stories are made of doesn't just come from his imagination.
Rather, he processes current developments in his books, making them even more realistic.
The third part of the tower series, which will be called “Tower Heritage”, is a long time coming.
In the meantime, the author is of course not sitting idle.
“I’m currently writing two other books.” He doesn’t say what they’re about.
Still.