When body parts live on: Schneider’s new crime novel

The detailed, bloody description of a murder is followed by a gruesome discovery by the protagonist, Inspector Schneider: the doll-like corpse consists of “human parts and electronics”. What and, above all, who is behind it? “Tap dance” has 192 pages. Also included are 18 drawings by the author.

The especially as “Music clown” (own name) and jazz musician, well-known entertainer Helge Schneider (68, “Litter box”) has also been writing books, including crime novels, for many decades. Commissioner Schneider has already investigated five previous criminal cases.

main villain in “Tap dance” is a surgeon and electronics expert named Jérôme Grismann, whose real name is Klaus. He kills people, saws them up, freezes the individual parts in freezers in the basement and, when he gets the chance, builds things “Hybrids” from them that he “Hybs” called or also “futuristic assistant robots”. For the construction he uses mannequins from Europe, which were used in Morocco and then brought to Bremerhaven via camel caravan via Jordan with the help of a container ship. Grismann picks her up there. Later the Hybs also go to Paris.

The murderers Johnny and his mother, who kill Hybs and a watch seller on a beach near San Remo, are also evil. Johnny is later eaten by a bear. His mother jumps into a 200 meter deep ravine, lands in a paddling pool and survives. “Old Espelkamp had been incredibly lucky again”, the narrator states. Her further fate remains open. She only makes one more appearance. There she sits, freezing, at the Stachus in Munich.

Meanwhile, in front of a tap dance studio, the inspector’s daughter, Charlene, gets to know the villain Grismann and gets closer to him. He later kills the studio operator. The case is finally solved in the studio, which is of course completely absurd.

Even apart from the many murders, grotesque violence pervades the novel: for example, when Mother Espelkamp “coarse” punches a woman’s face, “again and again”Johnny gave his mother one “bangs” or an employee on a colleague’s film set “aggressively punched in the face” skin. The narrator also mentions that Johnny starved a German Shepherd mix. “But his mother forgave him because he wasn’t quite ready to deal with animals yet.”

The character of the inspector does not offer the reader an ideal world either. The narrator repeatedly describes the investigator’s indifference towards his wife (pet name: “Hare”) to the point of contempt: “The Commissioner was really quite stupid.” She has to wash his back several times. For the “Fucking through” it no longer occurs in a scene. Before that, the phone rings. “Hare. I’m a criminalist. I can’t depict society with a soft focus. She is what she is”says Commissioner Schneider in another context.

The novel repeatedly addresses current topics from recent years. There is talk of a barrack on one “brown coal wasteland”where “soon the giant excavator” should rage. Or about electric cars, which are almost exclusively available. “Only in India were old cars still driving around; that was almost the only country where you could still buy petrol. Inspector Schneider therefore sometimes ordered petrol online.” He then receives it directly on the quay in Bremerhaven. There are other side swipes too, like this one: “Almost everyone now had cargo bikes and never had to use them to transport loads, but it was common practice not to use a car anymore.”

Older readers are likely to experience nostalgic joy when they hear about phone calls on wall phones, for example “Transitional coat” or go to a drive-in cinema. Since Inspector Schneider lives in the Ruhr area, there is of course also a coal dealer. He finds the first body.

The author writes in the epilogue that he began working on the book several years ago. “Reality quickly caught up with my absurd ideas about the book”said Schneider. He refers to a media report published in 2022 about an undertaker in the USA who is said to have illegally sold body parts. It’s okay for people to do a lively trade in body parts “with the indecent sides of Homo Sapiens that are omnipresent today”Schneider continued.

Helge Schneider also goes on a reading tour with the book. It starts on October 14th in Berlin and will be a guest at the Vienna Konzerthaus on October 24th and 25th. Both dates are sold out.