: Andrej Nikolaidis
: The Coming
: Istros Books
: 9781908236517
: 1
: CHF 3.00
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 110
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
In a small town on the Adriatic coast, a local detective is content to sacrifice truth for the sake of telling his clients the stories they want to hear. The Coming reads at first like a traditional detective novel, then suddenly changes form with the advent of snow in mid-summer. When the town library burns down under mysterious circumstances, the detective's long-lost son begins to get involved in the investigations from afar. He takes the reader on excursions into history and recounts the life of Fra Dolcino, a medieval heretic who announced the return of the Messiah and Sabbatai Zevi, a Renaissance cabalist who maintained that he himself was the Messiah. Somehow the answers may lie in the missing manuscript,'The Book of The Coming', but the unsolved mysteries of both past and present, as well as the ever encroaching environmental anomalies, seem to be leading to an apocalypse... 'The Coming is an explosive mixture on three levels: a hard-boiled investigation, the story of an impending global catastrophe, and the description of daily life in a small Balkan city. Imagine Dashiell Hammett meeting Umberto Eco, and both of them meeting Orhan Pamuk! If there is justice in the world, Nikolaidis' novel should become a bestseller bigger than the novels of James Patterson or John Grisham. And since there is no justice in the world, let us hope that a divine caprice will nonetheless make this insanely readable page-turner a mega success.'Slavoj ?i?ek Andrej Nikolaidis is a contemporary writer from one of Europe's newest and smallest states: Montenegro. He is also a polemical journalist whose writing is fundamental to the process of democratic dialogue in the region. He has written three novels and was awarded the European Prize for Literature 2011. This book is also available as a eBook. Buy it from Amazon here.

Andrej Nikolaidis is Montenegro's most controversial writer, as well as being its most awarded one. His first critically acclaimed novel Mimesis (2003) was followed by The Son (2006), The Coming (2009), Till Kingdom Come (2012) and The Hungarian Sentence (2016). An ardent supporter of Montenegrin independence, anti-war activist and promoter of human rights, Nikolaidis became known for his political views and public feuds. He writes regular columns for the daily Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti, and has written a number of articles for the Guardian UK.

Chapter One


which tells of a gruesome crime, anger, snow and the corruptness of human nature

The smell of blood reached us even before we entered the house, yet there were no signs of a break-in at the front door. Clearly the murderer had rung the bell and a member of the household had opened up for him. I turned around to Yanko:

‘Perhaps it was someone they knew.’

‘Psssht!’ he hissed, probably afraid the murderer was still in the house.

I looked back. Curious neighbours were already clustering around our patrol car behind the row of cypresses which skirted the Vukotics’ property. Some kids were roaring down the road in a souped-up yellow Fiat with music blaring and almost lost control at the bend. They spotted the crowd, slowed down, and drove back.

‘Turn that off,’ someone yelled at them, ‘there’s been a murder here!’

I forced the door with my shoulder and took a step into the house, gripping my pistol as tightly as I could, with both hands. It felt cold, as if I’d just picked it up out of the snow. Yanko came in behind me and lit the way with his flashlight. We heard a movement in the dark, or at least we thought we did, but it was hard to tell. We were on edge. Terrified, to tell the truth. It was my first murder, after all. Sure, I’d seen a lot of corpses before, but I don’t think any sane person can get used to death.

When we heard the noise, or thought we did, Yanko flashed his light into the kitchen. I stepped forward, ready to shoot. Then my legs caught on something and I fell. My cheek was warm and wet. ‘Fuck this,’ I called, ‘turn on the light.’

I was lying in Senka Vukotić’s blood. I found some paper towels in the kitchen and wiped my face and hands, while Yanko photographed Senka.

‘I think I moved her,’ I told him.

There was a large wound on her head. It turned out that the murderer had dealt the first blow with an axe. Evidently that didn’t kill her outright, so he knelt down and cut her throat. We didn’t find the knife, but the axe is at the lab in Podgorica for analysis.

The trail of blood led to the internal staircase. The lab later reported that the murderer had been wearing size seven gumboots with worn-out soles. As soon as he set foot on the stairs, Pavle must have fired at him: two shots, we found the buckshot in the wall. It’s incredible that he didn’t hit him. We combed the house several times but couldn’t find any trace of the murderer’s blood. That’s what fear does to you – Pavle was firing from above, from the top of the stairs, at a distance of no more than five yards. But before he could reload the shotgun the murderer was upon him. From what we’ve been able to reconstruct, it seems the first blow struck Pavle in the right shoulder. As the murderer swung the axe again to deal the mortal blow, Pavle dashed off into the bathroom and tried to hide.

But what happened next makes us certain that the murderer knew the family and had been to the house before: instead of going after Pavle he went into the children’s room. He knew they had children – that’s the point – and he knew where to find them. He grabbed Sonja in the bed by the window. She was seven, Jesus Christ… One blow was enough for a small child like that.

Meanwhile, Pavle realised he’d left the children at the tender mercies of the murderer. He ran into their room and found the intruder on the floor – the killer had needed to set down the axe to grab Helena, who’d hidden under her bed. That was the second chance Pavle had that night. He didn’t get a third. Although he now had the axe, which put him at a clear advantage, the murderer overpowered him and cut his throat, like he did with Senka down in the hall.

Helena tried to run away but she didn’t get far. We found her body in the living room, on the couch in front of the television, which was still on. Judging by the bloodstains, the murderer sat down next to her. Our psychologists are trying to unravel what that could possibly mean. One thing’s for sure – he switched on Animal Planet.

Then he left. No one saw him, no one heard him, and he left no fingerprints or DNA. There won’t be any further investigations because, as I’m sure you know, homeless people laid waste to the house and ultimately set it on fire.

Quite a story, don’t you think? I