Ausgezählt - Paid Out

409 Pages, published by Grafit, Dortmund, in March 2002

Two policemen on patrol are performing a routine check on a driver when he goes berserk and opens fire. One policeman is killed; his partner, Bruno Wegmann, is severely injured. Two other men fall victim to the crazed driver before he is found dead in his car hours later - suicide, according to the investigation.
Plagued by doubts, Bruno Wegmann is unable to get over the incident: could he have prevented his partner´s death? Then it emerges that his colleague had been carrying a suspicious amount of money, and that he may have known the madman. Was the dead policeman corrupt?
Returning to his work, Bruno meets with hostility from his colleagues; now others, too, are accusing him of having left his partner in the lurch. To escape the accusations and learn more about the background of the case Bruno takes over a special investigation at the request of police inspector Ben Engel. Engel´s suspicions have been aroused by a supposedly cocaine-addicted politician and his former security man, Max Pommer, now detective superintendent and brother-in-law of Bruno´s dead partner. Did Pommer kill the mad gunman?
Bruno makes Pommer's acquaintance - and weaves the strands surrounding him into a fateful net ...

Read what the press writes about Horst Eckert´s novels 

"In the style of a James Ellroy."
(Nordwest-Zeitung)