The famous novelist Linda Conrads, 38, is a mystery to her fans and the media. She hasn’t set foot over the threshold of her villa on Lake Starnberg for more than eleven years, and yet she’s extremely successful. Her life, though comfortable, is highly artificial and her grip on reality is fragile. Only very few know that she is tormented by a dark memory.

When she was young, Linda found her sister Anna in a pool of her own blood and saw the murderer fleeing. His face haunts her dreams. So it is a tremendous shock for her one day when that exact face appears on her television screen — it belongs to the high-profile journalist Victor Lenzen. She decides to set a trap to catch Victor by writing a novel based on the death of her sister and promote the book through one interview —with Victor. But what actually happened that night many years ago?

MELANIE RAABE was born in 1981 in Jena, Germany, and grew up in a 400-person village in Thuringia and a small town in North Rhine-Westphalia. She has worked as a journalist, scriptwriter, blogger, performer, and theatre actress. The Trap is her first novel and is being published in fourteen countries. She lives in Cologne.

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You won’t be able to resist.

Elle UK

A real literary phenomenon.

Mía (Spain)

An extraordinary suspense novel.

Für Sie (Germany)

The Trap by Melanie Raabe enthralls with its unexpected twists and turns.

Stern (Germany)

A smart and enthralling psychological thriller . . . splendidly entertaining.

WDR (Germany)

This German journalist has come up with a superb psychological thriller with a storyline that will have you hooked. Not suitable for sensitive constitutions.

AR (Spain)

A page-turner with a plot that surprises . . . the storm that The Trap generates is as big as its charm.

Die Welt (Germany)

A fascinating psychological thriller.

Bild (Germany)

The Trap is a page-turner... It's clever, devious, and driven, and twists the reader inside out until it reaches a terrific ending. What a great start to a writing career for Melanie Raabe.

Ian Hamilton, author of the Ava Lee novels

The Trap had me hooked from the start. Linda’s story unravels so cleverly, and Raabe keeps you questioning what’s fact and what’s not right to the end, ratcheting up the tension at the same time . . . A genuinely gripping debut: I had to keep reading until I was finished!

Debbie Howells, author of The Bones of You