A morass of political mafia, godfathers and lobbyists in František Šmehlík's new detective story The Beast
The Interior Minister verbally attacks a young journalist who writes about his alleged links to the underworld. The conflict full of threats is caught on camera, which sparks a big media scandal. A few days later, the journalist and his partner are murdered. According to a number of indications, the murder was a contract killing, but the manner of the journalist's girlfriend's murder is a reference to an unsolved series of murders in Šumperk seven years ago. Chief Investigator Laura Ara and her colleagues (including Václav Cesta, whom readers know from the detective novel To Hear the Deer Sing) wade through a morass of political mafia, godfathers and lobbyists with ties to foreign criminal gangs. Was the killer's main goal really to silence an inconvenient journalist?
