Lautlos wie sein Schatten (published in 1959) is a detective fiction

Detective fiction

Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by Frank Arnau

Frank Arnau

Frank Arnau was the pseudonym of a German crime fiction writer, born as Heinrich Schmitt.- Biography :Arnau was born in Vienna, the son of a hotel manager.He began his literary career as a newspaper journalist...

. It was translated into Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

as both New York na middernacht and Nacht in New York.

Plot

When James Baldon comes home from a party late at night, he is not able to open the front door of his apartment. The reason: a dead man is blocking his entrance. David Brewer, head of the Homicide Squad, starts the investigation. When it is discovered that the body was moved after being shot, everybody in the building turns out to have an alibi. However, Brewer is convinced that one of the alibis must be false.