The Sinner

The basis for the highly acclaimed Netflix series starring Jessica Biel. “Instantly gripping” said the Washington Post. Cora Bender killed a man on a sunny summer afternoon in full view of her family and friends. But why? What could have caused this quiet, lovable young mother to stab a stranger in the throat, again and again, until she was pulled off his body? For the local police it was an open and shut case. But Police Commissioner Rudolf Grovian refused to close the file and started his own maverick investigation. So began the slow unravelling of Cora’s past, a harrowing descent into a woman’s private hell.

Author Biography

Petra Hammesfahr, born in 1951, has not had an easy life: she left school at thirteen and became pregnant by an alcoholic husband at seventeen. It is a life that has provided inspiration for her bittersweet family crime novels where the sweetness of childhood and the horror of adults meet. Hammesfahr has written over twenty crime and suspense novels and writes scripts for television and film. She has won numerous literary prizes, including the Crime Prize of Wiesbaden and the Rhineland Literary Prize.