Death of a Foreign Gentleman

From award-winning writer Steven Carroll comes the first book in a series of post-war literary crime novels featuring Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter.

Cambridge, UK, 1947. Martin Friedrich, a German philosopher, is cycling through an intersection on his way to give a lecture when a speeding car strikes and kills him. Shortly afterwards, Detective Sergeant Stephen Minter, an Austrian-born cockney Jew, whose parents were interned during the war as enemy aliens, stands over the body of Friedrich, contemplating the age-old question – who did it?

Friedrich might be one of the finest minds of his age, but he's problematic: arrogant and a womaniser, he was also, in the 1930s, a member of the Nazi Party. As Stephen is soon to discover, there is no shortage of suspects. Friedrich was hated by almost everybody, even those who loved him. Is there any sense to his death or was it just a case of rotten, random luck? Has the universe spoken? Or are there more sinister factors at work?

From one of Australia's finest, most critically acclaimed writers, Death of a Foreign Gentleman is a playful, poignant and absorbing literary crime novel, with shades of The Third Man and Brighton Rock, which examines the question of how to live a meaningful life in an indifferent, random, post-God world.

About the Author

Steven Carroll is the multi-award winning author of fifteen novels including A World of Other People (2013), which was the joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award, and The Time We Have Taken (2007), which was the winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the SE Asia and Pacific Region and the Miles Franklin Award in 2008. Forever Young (2015) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Prime Minister's Literary Award in 2016. A New England Affair (2017) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award in 2018 and The Year of the Beast (2019) was longlisted for the 2020 Voss Literary Prize. His most recent novel, Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight was longlisted for the 2022 ARA Historical Novel Prize and for the 2023 Voss Literary Prize.

Steven lives in Melbourne with his partner, the author Fiona Capp, and their son.