Die Fette Hoppe

mdr 2013

On his first day as detective in Weimar, Lessing receives a stormier welcome than he'd expected from this dreamy small town. He finds himself thrust into the middle of a major police operation. A deranged extortionist has barricaded himself inside city hall with the pregnant detective Kira Dorn. Lessing's new boss, Kurt Stich, attempts to negotiate for Kira's life. Without hesitation, Lessing intervenes. He manages to overpower the hostage-taker. But there's no time to catch his breath or settle in: Weimar's Sausage Queen, Brigitte Hoppe, has gone missing.

Her butcher shop is famous for the "Fat Hoppe," Thuringia's finest bratwurst. Kira Dorn and Lessing uncover evidence suggesting Ms. Hoppe fell victim to a violent crime. Suspects abound, as the missing woman is both wealthy and notoriously cold-hearted. Her son Sigmar falls under investigators' scrutiny – and with him, his secret girlfriend Nadine Reuter, a femme fatale in her early thirties who's already been widowed twice. Did Nadine manipulate her lover into killing his own mother out of greed? Ms. Olm, head of the regulatory office, seems to be playing an equally opaque role. Or could the perpetrator be horse-drawn carriage driver Caspar Bogdanski, whom Brigitte Hoppe drove to financial ruin?

A call from an unknown person brings an unexpected twist: Brigitte Hoppe has been kidnapped. When the ransom exchange fails, the detectives begin to doubt. They grow increasingly convinced that Brigitte Hoppe was murdered, and the perpetrator is demanding ransom money for a corpse...