Books: Bella-Block finder Doris Gercke died at the age of 88

The crime writer Doris Gercke is dead. The inventor of the former ZDF investigator “Bella Block” died at the age of 88 on July 25 in Hamburg, as the Argument Verlag, based in the Hanseatic city, announced on Monday evening, citing the family.

Gercke, born in Greifswald in 1937, had made literary career on a detour. After an administrative apprenticeship and years as a housewife and mother, she took a gifted school diploma at the age of 40 and studied law. Your first novel “Weinschröter, you have to hang” was a huge success in 1988 and in 1993 with Hannelore Hoger as Bella Block for television. Hoger, who died in December 2024, embodied the unconventional commissioner until the end of the ZDF series 2018.

The often controversial Gercke later sold the rights to the investigator figure of the film series, but remained friends with the actress. In her debut book, the author described an atmosphere of desolation, everyday violence and sexism.

Gercke was also politically committed

The entertaining means of the crime novel also served her in other volumes, sometimes ironically broken milieus images – for example in the block cases “Moscow, my dear” (1989), “Kindernkorn” (1991), “Silence or Dying” (2007) and “Between night and day” (2012). Originally, she was inspired by novels Raymond Chandler and the Swedish couple Maj Sjöwall and by Wahlöö.

Gercke also wrote-initially under the pseudonym Marie-Jo Morell-Milena-Prohaska crime novel (“where it hurts”, 2016) about a supposedly emancipated antihero. Children’s and youth books and poetry are also part of the work of the writer.

Gercke felt connected to the women’s and peace movement and the fight against neo-fascism for many years. As a young woman, she had joined the DKP. She regularly took part in Easter marches and demonstrations. “I am at the lower layer from which I come and the women,” Gercke said for her 80th birthday in the dpa interview.