"Core Bender killed a man on a sunny summer afternoon by the lake and in full view of her family and friends. Why? What could have caused this quiet, lovable young mother to stab a stranger in the throat, again and again, until she was pulled off his body? For the local polce it was an open-and-shut case. Cora confessed; there was no shortage of witnesses. But Police Commissioner Rudulf Grovian refused to close the file and started his own maverick investigtion. So begns the slow unravelling of Cora's past, a harrowing descent into a woman's private hell."--Back cover.

"First published in German as Die Sunderin by Wunderlich, Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1999"--T.p. verso.