The Soul Breaker doesn't kill his victims. What he does is much worse.
He leaves them paralysed and completely catatonic. His only trace: a note left in their hands.

There are three known victims when suddenly the abductions stop. The Soul Breaker has tired of his game, it seems.

Meanwhile, a man has been found in the snow outside an exclusive psychiatric clinic. He has no recollection of who he is, or why he is there.

Soon the weather goes from bad to worse, and the clinic becomes completely cut off from the world outside.

When the head psychiatrist is found trembling, naked and distraught, with a slip of paper in her hands, it seems the Soul Breaker has returned. And with the clinic cut off from the world, no one is able to get in - or out.

Sebastian Fitzek is one of Europe's most successful authors of psychological thrillers. His books have sold 12 million copies, been translated into more than thirty-six languages and are the basis for international cinema and theatre adaptations. Sebastian Fitzek was the first German author to be awarded the European Prize for Criminal Literature. He lives with his family in Berlin.

John Brownjohn was a British literary translator. He translated more than 160 books, and won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German translation three times and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize once. He also collaborated with the filmmaker Roman Polanski on Tess (1979), Pirates (1986), Bitter Moon (1992), The Ninth Gate (1999) and The Pianist (2002). He died in January 2020 at the age of 90.