In the mid-17th century Bavaria/Germany, two brothers are executioners at neighbouring towns. Bartholomaus had come to replace the executioner, who disappeared at the end of the witch trials about 40 years earlier. Although the brothers are estranged, Jakob agrees to attend – with some of his family – Bartholomaus’ wedding. When they arrive in Bamberg a few days prior to the wedding, they discover that people have been going missing and parts of some of them have been found. Locals are convinced there is a werewolf attacking the people of Bamberg. This is beginning to be reminiscent of the witch trials from decades ago.

I really liked this. This is the 5th in the series and one of my favourites. Jakob’s two daughters are stubborn and strong. As I learned in the first book, at the time, executioners not only tortured and killed (it was their job), but they were also healers. They were the very bottom class of people and really were not permitted to rise above their station. Very interesting. Even more interesting was the brief author’s note at the end describing the panic surrounding werewolves at the time, not too long after witch trials that had happened. So, in addition to the characters being based on the author’s ancestors (he descended from the Kuisl executioner family), some of the events that make up the basis of the plot really happened. ( )

This one had a great premise with Jakob meeting his brother Bartl, and that could have been such an amazing storyline. And werewolves, wow. But unfortunately it really dragged for me and I had to skip through some very boring (to me personally) mini-adventures of various groups of the family to get to a rather confusing and weird ending. ( )

The good thing about listening to MP3 CD's is that a nearly-600-page book fit on two discs, so I don't have to worry about having to change discs mid-commute. (I'm not an idiot, so I'm not going to do it while in motion, and have you ever noticed that when you need a red light for something like this they all magically turn green? Next time you're running late, drop something you kind of need out of reach, or smudge your glasses so that they need to be wiped. Voila: green lights through to your destination.)

The bad thing about listening to MP3 CD's is that there is less sense of how far I've managed to progress in those 600 pages. And it felt like those two discs were in my car's CD player for months. It actually was one month. It felt like the story could have been told much, much more economically.

I find it fascinating that author Oliver Pötzsch is "a descendant of one of Bavaria's leading dynasties of executioners". He has embraced that ancestry, and uses it as the backbone of this series about Jakob Kuisl, the hangman of Schongau, and his family. (I don't think I realized this was the fifth book of the series when I found it on eBay.) Hangman – which means not only executioner but torturer. Thing is, he might have embraced it just a wee tad bit too closely, because that trade was rather lovingly explored in these almost-600 pages, to a degree that became kind of disturbing. No – not gonna lie: it's gorge-risingly explicit at times. There were times I deeply regretted experiencing this as an audiobook, because on paper or Kindle I could have skimmed over the descriptions of torture. This way, with Grover Gardner enunciating every word, I couldn't miss a thing, and there are things which have left marks.

There is a lot going on in this book. Jakob and his family – his daughters Barbara and Magdalena, and Magdalena's husband Simon and their two sons – make their way from Schongau to Bamberg to attend his long-estranged brother's wedding, and en route the train they are traveling with is halted when a severed arm is discovered. It being 1668 in the dark woods of the Reich, superstitious fear ramps up almost immediately – and it's a great beginning to a creepy tale of werewolves and serial killers, fog and abandoned houses, blood and death and scattered body parts and … theatre. Because just after the Kuisls arrive in Bamberg (and I think it's fun that Simon is included in the Kuisl family rather than his own) there arrives a theatre troupe planning to spend the winter in the city performing German translations of Shakespeare and Marlowe and lots more (including Peter Squenz, a play featuring (originating?) the Rude Mechanicals from Midsummer).

The eeriness of the setting is well done. This is a city riddled with empty homes, places which – whether shabby or elegant, large or small – have never been taken over by the homeless or people trying to move up in the world. The story behind that is horrifying, and while I'm not entirely sure everyone in the city, including the homeless, would allow fear of hauntings keep them from appropriating some very nice abandoned houses, I'll let that pass. The 17th century is brought to life in all its mud and filth and rawness. The narrative can become a bit drawn-out, a bit repetitive (oh goody, the elderly (for their time) brothers are brawling again), and there is a certain amount of recapping in which one character will fill in someone who missed something, which is always annoying (yes I know I was there), but suspenseful scenes are very suspenseful, and while I half-guessed the solution of the mystery I didn't come anywhere near the actual full explanation. And many of the drawbacks of the book are to an extent saved by the characters. I like these people. Well, not really our two irascible hangmen, Jakob Kuisl and his brother Bartholomaus, the hangman of Bamberg (Bartl); their characters were not built to be liked – but his daughters, Magdalena's husband Simon, Simon's friend Samuel, Bartl's fiancée, the actors, the old lye-scarred caretaker. Each has a beautifully well-rounded personality, each is immediately identifiable by his or her speech or actions (Magdalena would have behaved very differently from Barbara in the same situations, and vice versa). I thought Simon was terrific – very intelligent, a little milquetoast, completely deferential to his wife, and completely comfortable with that. I loved the relationship between him and his father-in-law. I'm not compelled to go collect the rest of the series, except that I would be happy to get more of Simon's story.

And, of course, Grover Gardner's narration was excellent. Character voices, non-English pronunciations, and gallons of blood all are child's play to this man and his marvelous voice.

My primary problem with the book, and this is perhaps a little spoiler-y so skip this last paragraph if you're wary, is that here you have Simon, who was about to become a doctor when that choice was taken away from him, and his friend Samuel who is a physician. And there you have … oh, dear, I've forgotten: was it one of the bishops? (Here's one of the problems with audiobooks: I can't remember, and I can't check.) Anyway. There you have this gentleman with an apparent bite wound and some escalating symptoms. About five minutes after he first started explaining what he was going through, I made a diagnosis. Then things move along, and with every virtual page I was more and more certain: it was rabies. And Simon and Samuel just kept puzzling over what it could be, and I began to want to yank them both out of the book and shake them – for pete's sake, how many more clues do you need?? I began to doubt my assumptions that rabies has been around forever and that well-educated physicians ought to know what it was … and then one or the other of the two physicians actually uses the word "rabid". Meaning "obsessive" or "fervent", not "hydrophobic". I wish I knew if that was a translation choice or Pötzsch's, because honestly that just made me a little rabid. Even when the bishop (?) started becoming averse to liquids, they didn't get it. No light bulb. No "aha". It was a little ridiculous. ( )

(2) Another installment in 'The Hangman's Daughter' series. Historical mysteries centered on a 17th century executioner and his family in Bavaria. An apparently little known series (only a handful of people on LT have each book) yet available for free through the Kindle Lenders Library and frankly they aren't that bad. Very similar to 'Mistress of the Art of Death' series.

In this one, Jakob Kuisl and all his family travel to the city of Bamberg to visit the executioner there who is Jakob's estranged brother who is getting married. There are strange goings on in Bamberg - people are disappearing and mangled body parts are showing up. There have been sightings of a werewolf. Thus begins a fairly long twisty saga of revenge and hysteria which is fairly entertaining. The story was a bit overwritten -- too many little mystery-lets within the big mystery if you will. And as usual the English translation at times seemed wooden. I actually suspect these are much better books in German.

Anyway, a bit too long this one - but overall of similar quality as the others. The family is growing, growing up, and changing and there is some character development there. Always some interesting bits of history - for instance the disease rabies and how it may or may not be tied in with the legend of werewolves. I am happy to keep reading this series; in particular, for free. ( )

Surprisingly intriguing story in the series about Hangman's Daughter. Great, fun characters, lots of details about life and times in Germany, and about being the executioner and family. Reviewed for Booklist. ( )