Die Putzhilfe

On the crime bestseller lists of DLF and FAZ from December 2019 to February 2020. German Crime Prize (2nd place) and main prize of the Stuttgart Crime Prize (awarded when large events are possible, in October). One day in November, Franziska Oswald leaves her home, boards a train, and travels to Berlin, where she knows no one. Franziska leaves her life behind, a promising career as a young academic, a lovely single-family home in the Münsterland that she shared with her partner Johannes. In Berlin, she ends up in a run-down ground-floor apartment. She signed the lease under a false name. She wanders aimlessly around the city. No one must know where she is. Then she meets Henny Mangold. Henny Mangold offers her a cleaning job. A cleaning position is the last thing Franziska desires, but she accepts. Soon, she realizes that not only does she have something to hide, but so does Henny Mangold. And then there’s Sina, a wandering teenager from Neukölln, who starts following Franziska out of boredom. "The Cleaning Lady" deals with control and social norms, confinement and liberation, real and imagined overwhelm. All these themes form the hovering backdrop of a plot that is as surprising as it is tension-filled.