A Desperate Chance for Ellery Queen

Quick-witted, well-read cultured types revolve around each other in a delightful potpourri of theatre, romanticism and theft.

A socially-inept man lies his way into the police believing he's a high-rolling drug smuggler in exchange for money and a holiday. Unfortunately for him, a very real drug deal is happening at the very same place.

In a little village in Brittany, a 10 year old girl is found assassinated. René, an artist by profession and the girl's art teacher, is the last person to have seen her. He is immediately questioned by the police inspector in charge.

Alison Flesh, a rebellious and intrepid Nice police captain, is forced by her superior, Commissioner Djiba, to work in tandem with Parisian lieutenant Leïla Balani, an expert in criminology but a real drag in the field.

"What's for dinner?" - "Nothing." A bombshell at the Eberhofer farm: Grandma is on strike. After what feels like 2000 cakes and even more roast pork, bread dumplings and cabbage, Grandma decides to stop caring for the family. Pure chaos. Papa Eberhofer, Franz, Leopold and Susi should finally learn to look after themselves. Now, of all times, Susi temporarily takes over Niederkaltenkirchen's town hall as deputy mayor and uses her newfound power to reduce Franz's position to half-time so that he can look after his son Pauli in the future. This action touches Eberhofer's masculinity. Fortunately, it doesn't take long before a crow picks up a human ear and a missing person case that was actually stuck unexpectedly develops into a complicated murder case that brings Franz and Rudi together again as a dream team of investigators in top form.

'Die, you pig!'. The words are emblazoned on the wall of school principal Höpfl's home for all the villagers to see. Soon after, this very man is found lying dead as a doornail on the train tracks. Franz Eberhofer, the local policeman in the sleepy Lower Bavarian province of Niederkaltenkirchen, suspects murder. And the prospect is one that does not entirely displease him, as this backwoods offers very little excitement other than the fantastic meals with his cooking-obsessed Grandma or the constant stress with his Beatles-loving Dad. He is supported by Rudi Birkenberger, now a department-store detective but previously with Franz in the Munich detective squad until both were suspended. The Höpfl case gets even more tangled when a second corpse is found, that of a drug-addict hustler with whom Höpfl had been in contact. Franz must also cope with the fact that his Susi is having an affair and he thinks the lover is the Thai offspring of his estranged brother, who is supposed to be their babysitter.