Trapped in the mountains
Bel Veder
Gothic novel
Press
OFFICE OF CULTURE
May 2019
Literary award for «Bel Veder»
Mirko Beetschen is awarded with the literary prize of Bern's Office of Culture 2019. – «With ‹Bel Veder›, author Mirko Beetschen successfully creates a visually stunning and thrilling Gothic novel, in which he playfully messes with the reader's expectations. The setting is an old grand hotel in the Swiss Alps in the autumn of 1946.»
SRF REGIONALJOURNAL
December 2018
«I hate to watch horror movies in a remote place»
«Journalist and writer Mirko Beetschen has written a gothic novel set in an abandoned hotel on the fictitious Finsteralp in the Bernese Oberland. Here, a handful of relatives meet to claim the inheritance of their deceased grandfather - and strange things start happening.»
NEW BOOKS IN GERMAN
September 2018
Recommended for translation by NEW BOOKS IN GERMANS
«Mirko Beetschen’s Alpine thriller is teeming with elements from a classic Gothic ghost story. While there are echoes of older writers such as Edgar Allen Poe and Agatha Christie, or Henry James in The Turning of the Screw, there are also similarities with contemporary voices including Kate Mosse in Labyrinth and Susan Hill.
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Until the opening of the will the small group settles within the empty rooms of the remote hotel palace and dreams of revived grandeur. Eleanor, however, feels increasingly threatened by the strange environment. The mountains as well as the abandoned halls and corridors of the hotel unsettle her. Is the old building really as empty as it seems. When a terrible accident happens and an unexpected snowstorm cuts the hotel off, the situation escalates.
Intelligent suspense with a classical aproach
Autumn 1946. The ancient owner of an abandoned grand hotel in the Bernese Alps disappears without a trace and is declared dead. His niece Eleanor arrives with her twin sister Violet from Baltimore to claim the inheritance and meets the members of her European family.
ZYTGLOGGE VERLAG
Hardback with dust jacket, 13 x 21 cm, 443 sides
Picture credits cover: Swiss National Library, Swiss Federal Archive for the Preservation of Monuments (EAD): Archive Photoglob-Wehrli
ISBN 978-3-7296-0997-6
No bedtime story
The author cleverly arranges the motifs and stylistic elements of a classic Gothic novel into an atmospherically dense, gripping thriller that is most certainly no bedtime story.
