Jürgen Ehlers
Off the Track

A wild chase on Hamburg’s most shameless bank robber: Hamburg, June 1959. The most spectacular bank robbery ever in the history of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg: a masked man robs Hamburg’s central branch of the Deutsche Bank, less than 200 metres away from the next police station. Alarm bells sound, the doors lock automatically, but the robber jumps through an open window, clears the street firing gunshots and, after fleeing recklessly through an underground tunnel, manages to get away with 20,000 Deutschmarks. Kommissar Horst Berger quickly realises this robbery belongs to a series that began a few years back. But who is behind these offences? Time and again the Hamburg bank robber is one step ahead of his persecutors.
A bank robbery is not a crime of passion – if you can’t catch the robber red-handed, the only way out is to set a trap. A difficult task for the young Kommissar. On the wall of Berger’s department hangs a large photograph of the “Lord of Barmbeck”, the legendary professional criminal Julius Adolf Petersen, signed by the man himself. And below in a different handwriting: “We’ll catch them all!” But when? Berger can’t help thinking...