A mere week after the German release of Anne Mette Hancock’s debut novel The Corpse Flower, and we find her firmly planted on the German bestseller charts.

She is the first Danish female crime author ever on Der Spiegel’s Top 20 bestseller chart. In her second week she moved up to 2nd place on the Spiegel list, thereby breaking top three.

This is a truly amazing feat in a country that traditionally doesn’t publish a lot of Danish literature in translation and even fewer crime fiction authors. 

Anne Mette Hancockis naturally thrilled by the news from Germany and the great success her books are having in the country:

“It is such a privilege, and of course I’m both happy and insanely proud to have landed on the Spiegel chart. When you’re working with storytelling it means the world that there’s someone out there who wants to read or listen along. That someone feels like the things I create have value for them. So I am enormously thankful that my readership keeps growing – both internationally and at home.” 

The Corpse Flower, which was called Leichenblumen in German, is the first book in Anne Mette Hancock’s successful crime series, as of yet composed of three volumes. The German publisher is FischerScherz, one of the leading publishers on the market.

When the German edition of The Corpse Flower was reviewed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine it was especially praised for the two main character’s and their wonderful interaction as well as for its tight, suspenseful plot.

On the whole it’s going swimmingly for Anne Mette Hancock’s Heloise Kaldan and Erik Schäfer series abroad. In the last year the two first books in the series were sold to the New York based publisher Crooked Lane for US and UK publication. Aside from that the series is also sold in a number of territories including Sweden, Russia and France.