Books. A Sunday to Kill: Krimi, the Time of Assassins in Interwar Berlin

1930 in interwar Berlin. Fritz Lang, who loves to tell stories, is preparing to shoot "A Woman in the Moon." It is at this moment that Inspector Lehman, who loves secrets, finds him and convinces him to draw inspiration from a horrific news story haunting Germany: the "Vampire of Düsseldorf" has just been arrested and accused of 80 murders. The filmmaker then sets out on the trail of this monster, taken by the police officer to the very scene of the murders, to enrich his project...

Thibault Vermot for the drawing and Alex W. Inker for the script offer us an impressive graphic novel with this "Krimi" which has just been published by Sarbacane, a publisher accustomed to bold bets.

An expressionist thriller

Der Krimi is the German for detective novel, and the approach of the two authors is first and foremost a tribute to the expressionist cinema of the interwar period, when the films of Fritz Lang and Murnau were triumphing on the screens: the former would soon sign his talking masterpiece, "M the Accursed", while the latter, nine years earlier, had delivered an extraordinary "The Testament of Doctor Mabuse".

The aesthetic of "Krimi" refers to this sinister period when the Nazis were soon to take power, persecute the Jews, and open the Dachau camp. It draws a chilling parallel between the murders of Peter Künten, the Vampire of Düsseldorf, and Hitler's seizure of power. In a very large format, it is drawn entirely in black and white, but never, throughout its 270 pages, does the attention slacken, thanks to an editing that recalls the cinema of the time: the formats are extremely varied, alternating close-ups, panoramic shots, tracking shots. Monumental...

“Krimi”, by Thibault Vermot and Alex W. Inker. Blowgun. €35