Not any kind of whodunnit (well, there's a possibility he was set up, but it seems unlikely)...but mainly a consideration of the 2012 murder of a popular businesswoman by her apparently upstanding mayor husband.
She was a pretty, pampered daughter of comfortably off parents in the former E Germany. He was poor and unloved by his mother. He was a hanger on around this ideal family. When she found herself an abandoned single mother, he married her....it seems, for convenience.
Heinrich Scholl.....quiet, clever, diligent...rises up the career ladder. His wife runs a beauty salon, expects his total obedience at all times....and puts on a show for her friends.
With the end of his career and the long empty days of retirement, Heinrich seems to be going off the rails...a flat, a mercenary Thai girlfriend....even as he continues to play the ideal husband at his wife's social gatherings. Then one day, Brigitte Scholl is found strangled and buried in the forest, along with her dog...
The way it's written certainly does leave one feeling more sympathy for nice, likeable Heinrich, a 70 year old in jail, than the rather unpleasant wife. And yet he could have just left her...
But highly readable. ( )

I feel badly calling a true crime book forgettable. There's an implication that the victim, in this case, Brigitte Scholl, was forgettable, which seems a heartless assertion. But, really, The Scholl Case is not much more than a newspaper article run long. It's interesting in a mildly benign way, somewhat infuriating in that Brigitte Scholl is definitely presented more in a bitches be crazy style than her husband Heinrich, who frequents sex-workers, cheats on his wife, abandons a child born out of wedlock -- so it's hardly like he's an upstanding gentleman either. But while Brigitte's flaws are hammered home almost to the point of inanity, Heinrich's get side aside with a shrug. Oh well the book seems to say Product of his upbringing. Because, clearly, Brigitte just sprung up fully formed in the GDR fully formed with no outside influences whatsoever *rolls eyes*.

So there's no grand reveal here. No new evidence. Even Reich-Osang's interactions with Heinrich are bland, polite letters and visits where nothing much happens. The Scholl Case is refreshingly un-lurid for a true crime book, but that makes it seem more academic than anything else, and, in a sense, a bit purposeless.

The Scholl Case by Anja Reich-Osang went on sale December 29, 2016.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )