A gripping crime story with an almost Czech lightness. In the Bavarian-Bohemian border region, a skeletal remains are discovered, apparently buried in the woods decades ago. The skull shows a bullet wound. Murder has a statute of limitations of twenty years in the Czech Republic—but whether the body is actually older cannot yet be determined. Investigative pressure is mounting for Major Filip Toman and Captain Jiří Zmeškal from another quarter as well, since the skeleton fuels the wildest speculations with which the press fills the summer news lull. For Josef Meinl, who comes from a German-Czech family, the affair becomes a profound search for his family's past. He begins to investigate the fate of his great-grandfather, who worked as a smuggler in the border region and one day never returned. Was the great-grandfather, revered as a family hero, involved in the skirmishes of 1938, when Nazi troops attacked Czech border posts in the lead-up to the Munich Agreement? Jiří Zmeškal, however, uncovers a completely different family tragedy in his research... Biography: Elmar Tannert lives as a freelance writer in Nuremberg. In 1999, he received the Cultural Advancement Award of the City of Nuremberg and the Cultural Advancement Award of the Free State of Bavaria, and in 2001, the Cultural Advancement Award of the District of Middle Franconia.