Tatort Ostsee. Ein banaler Unfall stößt Laura Förster mit der Nase auf einen Mord, dessen Spuren in jene achtziger Jahre reichen, da der Kalte Krieg mit einem Male siedend heiß zu werden drohte: vom NATO-Doppelbeschluss, SS 20, Pershing Marschflugkörper, Strategic Defence Initiative bzw. "Star Wars" bis zum Mauerfall und Implosion der UdSSR. Im neutralen, politisch jedoch sehr bewegten Schweden jenseits von ABBA und Pippi L. hieß dies vor allem "Whiskey on the Rocks" alias S 363, in dessen düsterem Schatten Laura und Solitaire wie Raubvögel ins Nest der Grauen Albatrosse einfallen, einer Liga des internationalen Verbrechens, an deren Spitze der mysteriöse U-Boot-Kommandant Schramm steht. Wie immer garantiert der Name Laura so spannende wie humorvolle Unterhaltung, diesmal gepaart mit einer Hommage an das einzigartige Biotop der ostschwedischen Schären, schrullige U-Bootfahrer und verblichene Kap Hoorn-Bezwinger.

Born 1945 in Altensteig, Northern Black Forest region, Paul Werner grew up in Wuppertal. A Naval ensign set for a professional military career, he left the German Armed Forces in reaction to the 1967 assassination of Berlin student Benno Ohnesorg, whose murder had, in the opinion of quite a few Germans, been brushed under the carpet by both politics and the judiciary. Having studied English and Russian philology in Wuerzburg and Bonn and obtained his degree in 1972, Paul Werner did not take up grammar-school teaching, however, but seized the opportunity of becoming a conference interpreter with the EU-Commission in Brussels, instead. Studying law at the Open University in parallel to his working from eight "passive" languages into German and English, he did stints of varying duration in European capitals and cultures such as London, Copenhagen, Athens, Moscow, and Istanbul. Married to a Dane, he visited Scandinavia and not least Norway on a regular basis both by boat, car, and aeroplane. Having dabbled in the concoction of articles and essays both in German and English ever since his military and student days, Paul Werner, meanwhile a pensioner, has for more than a decade devoted himself almost exclusively to the writing of essays on "sea lore" and adventure novels with a criminal leaning. A divorced dad of three adult daughters, Paul Werner today lives in Heidelberg, a pretty far cry from the sea.