Review: Splintered Justice: A Linder and Donatelli Mystery by Kim Hays

 

Splintered Justice: A Linder and Donatelli Mystery by Kim Hays is the latest read in this complicated police procedural series that began with Pesticide. Set in Bern, Switzerland, social issues have always been a part of the series as they impact the crimes in the books in one way or another. That happens here as the events in Croatia in the 90s has a significant impact on one of the two primary storyline police cases. So too does a long-ago case that may or may not have led to a wrong conclusion.

 

The church known as the Bern Münster Cathedral of St. Vincent is a historic and special place. Many years ago, a death happened there that may or may not have been a suicide. The incident was not deeply investigated and most folks accepted the ruling of suicide and have moved on.

 

In the here and now, Detective Renzo Donatelli has had a rough afternoon at the dentist. Finally free from the chair and feeling the aftereffects of work in his mouth, he is walking adjacent to the Bern Münster Cathedral in Bern, Switzerland, and headed back to work. He’s thinking about having a coffee as well as case that Detective Giuliana Linder has and that he is assisting on, when a young boy crashes into him. The sight of Renzo’s service weapon makes the kid panic and he scrambles to his feet and flees.

 

Detective Renzo gives chase and soon loses him in the traffic and pedestrians. Thinking about how much the sight of his weapon terrified the kid, he checks in with dispatch to see if there are any reports of a crime that has been committed in the nearby vicinity. While dispatch does not have any reports of a crime, they do have a report that somebody shook the scaffolding at the nearby Bern Münster Cathedral of St. Vincent and a worker was hurt in the incident.

 

He returns to church and goes inside to find another officer as well as Denis Kellenberger who has been injured. He is an apprentice glassmaker and was high up in the church working on a window that is hundreds of years old. Hew says somebody started shaking the scaffolding and screaming that he was a murderer. He fell off the scaffolding and now has a broken wrist and other injuries.

 

Some of the other people in the church at the time he fell have a lot of harsh things to say about the victim. Then there are their accounts of what happened to consider. Clearly, this was not a prank with unintended consequences. The person that shook the scaffold did it with malicious intent and is lucky the apprentice glassmaker is not dead.

 

Detective Renzo Donatelli has a lot of reasons to investigate this case as a serious crime and does. His doing so means that he has far less time to assist with a case that Detective Giuliana Linder had drop in her lap a few days earlier when the detective handling it had to suddenly take a leave.

 

Tamara Hofstetter is sure that her father was murdered and her step mother did it. Her brother, Sebestian Allemann, does not seem to be as sure and is just going along with his sister who is clearly on a warpath. For Detective Giuliana Linder, this new case that has been thrust upon her is the death of their stepfather a few months earlier. The adult children believe that their stepmother, Ruth Seiler, murdered their father, Werner Allemann.

 

The man had been suffering dementia for some time and had gotten much worse in the months preceding his death this past February. Sometime in the fall, they realized that their dad was very sick and urgently needed help. They are very upset that they were not told earlier and that his illness was hid from them. As soon as they found out how bad things truly were, they wanted him admitted to a specialized nursing home. Such a place would have been incredibly expensive. That financial cost and the impact to their savings was why their stepmother did not want it to happen.

 

But, it was finally going to happen over her objections. Then he suddenly died.

 

It is the daughter’s belief that their stepmother deliberately poisoned their 82-year-old father with insulin in the short time before he was to be admitted in order to keep her half of the inheritance. The stepmother, Ruth, has already admitted to giving him the insulin and has been arrested and charged.

 

As the case proceeds in the legal system, it is now Detective Guilianna Linder’s job to go over the previous detective’s work, and the case as a whole, verify everything, add context and background, and stand ready to assist the prosecution in court. Tamara wants everyone involved, his doctor and others, as well as her stepmother fully prosecuted and in jail. The case is complicated and troubling which is part of the reason Detective Renzo Donatelli is involved.

 

Those two cases drive the police procedural side of the book. As always, the family lives of Linder and Donatelli are their own major storylines. Their evolving family life stories arc through the series and this read. Change is coming and not always in the way either one would like it to happen. Things there, as well as in the cases, develop slowly, and the very complicated read gradually works towards a conclusion that works completely.

 

A series that should be read in order, Splintered Justice: A Linder and Donatelli Mystery from Seventh Street Books is another solidly good read. Author Kim Hays continues to craft books that are highly entertaining and educational and are very much worth your time.

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4fV0tyU

 

My reading copy came in digital format through the Hoopla App and the Dallas Public Library System.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2025