Petra Hammesfahr is an acclaimed German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 crime writer, winner of several awards including the Crime Prize of Wiesbaden and Rhineland Literary Prize. She published her first novel at the age of 17, and has earned comparisons to Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951...

, Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, , who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries....

, and Stephen King

Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

 (as a reflection of her bestseller-status in her native Germany). Her novel The Sinner was recently published to wide acclaim in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 by the Bitter Lemon Press

Bitter Lemon Press

Bitter Lemon Press is a small London-based independent publisher, set up by Francois von Hurter in 2003 which specialises in translated literary crime novels and romans noirs from abroad. They currently publish novels by authors such as Gianrico Carofiglio, the famous Swiss crime-writer Friedrich...

, translated from the original by John Brownjohn. A second novel, The Lie, is also published by the same press. Hammesfahr lives in Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

.