Ghost of the past

A MISSING GIRL. BONES FOUND IN THE FOREST. AND ONE YOUNG ACCIDENTAL DETECTIVE…

The harsh years just after the end of the Second World War. The discovery of human bones in an inaccessible forest ravine somewhere in the borderlands points to a crime that the police fail to solve.

Years later, a strange coincidence brings accidental detective Ota Fink – a lathe operator in civilian life – back to the place where, as a fifteen-year-old apprentice, he spent his first summer job and fell in love with Lucie, who was two years his senior. He has not seen her since, and other loves eventually pushed her from his mind.

Only now does he learn that the beautiful Lucie mysteriously disappeared the day after he left. Rumour has it she is long dead, and the moss-covered bones discovered by a mushroom picker in a pile of pine needles and decaying leaves were hers.

What role did the driver of an unusual pre-war car play in her disappearance, having ruined a romantic forest date for young Ota and Lucie one August night in 1947? Twelve years after the crime – during the hot summer of 1959 – Ota Fink sets off on the trail of the mysterious car. Will he manage to find out what really happened to Lucie back then?