When Hope Fails - K.J. Vane

A death notice. Four lines. Nobody at the funeral.

When journalist Lena Hartmann notices the notice for Jochen Meier, forty-seven, dead of “sudden, unexplained illness”, she almost turns the page. She has learned the hard way what happens when she lets a thread drop.

Jochen worked quietly for twenty years in the laboratory of the Hoffnung Fertility Clinic, and he left almost no trace anywhere else. His mother insists the official story is wrong. The clinic’s founder, the warm and unhurried Dr Andreas Brenner, is generous with his time, his coffee and his answers.

Then the pathologist’s report changes everything. Jochen was killed by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. And a nineteen-year-old with a printed table and a folder of DNA matches has found something that should not exist.

As Lena follows the evidence from a quiet clinic on a residential street to the dark corners of the internet, she finds that the truth is far larger than a single death, and that the people who guard it are the ones who seem most willing to help.

When Hope Fails is a slow-burning, character-driven thriller about trust, grief and the lengths people go to in order to protect what they’ve built.

Part of the Lena Hartmann series. Can be read as a standalone.