Bernd Schroeder Hau Carl Hanser Verlag, August 2006, 366 pp ISBN: 3-446-20756-2 Corsica, May 1901, and a young man in a linen suit strolls down the deserted beach at Ajaccio, stirring the lyrical heart of Olga, a girl with poetic pretensions. Six years on, the same young man is being brought to trial in Karlsruhe, accused of the murder of Olga's mother, the wealthy Josephine Molitor. This dazzling young man is Karl (later changed by himself, with typical affectation, to Carl) Hau. A great charmer, opportunist, swindler and womaniser, he was the subject of a sensational case in Wilhelmine Germany which caused riots in the streets and changes in the law. Schroeder tells this real-life story in a leisurely, swirling spiral of dialogues, letters and lists that carries the reader from Hau's initial meeting with the Molitor family to his final release from prison and even his discussions with his publisher (he himself wrote two books about his case), before circling back to the beginning and adding a new and telling piece of information that startlingly rearranges the facts. We see Hau opening his flirtatious campaign both with Olga and her neurotic elder sister Lina. We meet the jealous onlooker, Ferdinand Wöhrle, who becomes more and more dubious about the fraudster's tall tales. Six years later, a passenger on a train to Karlsruhe falls into conversation with a man he assumes to be an American, travelling under the name of 'Charles Howe' and accompanied by two burly guards. As the train pulls in, the gentleman is bemused at seeing Howe being jostled by a large crowd, some shouting 'Murderer!' while others greet him with cheers. So who was right? Time after time the reader returns to the fundamentals of the plot, on each occasion gathering new information and encountering fresh doubts. What about the two prostitutes at the hotel in Constantinople? What about Hau's marriage to Lina (instead of Olga)? Did he really infect the poor girl with syphilis? And what about his alleged conversations with the Sultan of Turkey himself? Much like Julian Barnes in Arthur and George, Bernd has used the details of a largely forgotten case to paint a portrait of a charismatic rogue and the society in which he lived.