Buchpremiere »Nacht der Ruinen« von Cay Rademacher im Kölnischen Stadtmuseum

In the organizer's words:

On February 12, in cooperation with the KÖLNER STADT-ANZEIGER, we are celebrating the book premiere of Cay Rademacher's new historical crime novel "Night of the Ruins" at the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum.

Cay Rademacher writes about German history in a way that could hardly be more exciting

About the book: March 1945: American troops have reached Cologne. Despite the slogans from Berlin, there is little resistance and the city seems deserted. Barely 20,000 people live in the ruins. But the Americans only conquered part of the destroyed metropolis, as the Rhine formed the front line for weeks. Recently, the cathedral city was once again heavily bombed. A downed pilot crashed into the chaos with his parachute - and became the victim of a cowardly lynching. Now the young American soldier Joe Salmon, actually Joseph Salomon, a Cologne Jew who barely managed to emigrate to the USA after the "Reichskristallnacht", is tasked with solving the case. Joe is looking for the murderer or the murderess - but he is actually secretly looking for two other people he once had to leave behind in his homeland: Jakub and Hilda, his best friend and the woman he was hopelessly in love with. Joe follows winding paths as he approaches the solution to the case and his own past, encountering historical figures who lived and worked in Cologne in March 1945: George Orwell, Konrad Adenauer, Hans Habe, Irmgard Keun.