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Kim Hays

Biography

Kim Hays

Kim Hays is a dual citizen (Swiss/American) who has made her home in Bern since she married a Swiss. Before that she lived in San Juan, Vancouver and Stockholm, as well as the US, her birthplace. Since the age of 17 she has worked at a wide variety of jobs, from factory forewoman to director of a small nonprofit and, in Switzerland, from sociology lecturer to cross-cultural trainer. She began writing mysteries when her son left for college.

PESTICIDE, the first book in the Polizei Bern series, which features detectives Giuliana Linder and Renzo Donatelli, was published by Seventh Street Books in April 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2020 Debut Dagger award by the Crime Writers’ Association. It also was a finalist for the Silver Falchion Award for Best Mystery. The second book in the series, SONS AND BROTHERS, came out in 2023, and the third, A FONDNESS FOR TRUTH, will be available in April 2024.

Hays has a BA in English history and literature from Harvard and a PhD in cultural sociology from UC-Berkeley.

Kim Hays

Books by Kim Hays

by Kim Hays - Fiction, Mystery

Andi Eberhart is riding her bicycle home on an icy winter night when she is killed in a hit-and-run. Her devastated partner, Nisha, is convinced the death was no accident. Andi had been receiving homophobic hate mail for several years, and the letters grew uglier after the couple’s baby was born. Bern homicide detective Giuliana Linder is assigned to investigate what happened to Andi. As she pieces together the details of Andi and Nisha’s lives, her assistant Renzo Donatelli looks into Andi’s job advising young men drafted into Switzerland’s civilian service. Giuliana and Renzo are again tempted to become more than just friendly colleagues. As both detectives dig into Andi’s life, one thing becomes clear: Andi’s friends and family may have loved her for her honesty, but her outspokenness threatened others --- perhaps enough to get rid of her.

by Kim Hays - Fiction, Mystery

Walking his dog along Bern’s Aare river on an icy November night, a surgeon in his 70s is hit in the face and thrown into the river to drown. When his bruised corpse is found, his watch is missing. The more Swiss police detective Giuliana Linder and her assistant, Renzo Donatelli, learn about Johann Karl Gurtner, the more convinced they are that his death was not random. Talking to Gurtner’s family raises as many questions as it answers, but one thing becomes clear: the surgeon’s relationship with his middle son, Markus, was grim. Tracking others who might have had reason to hate Gurtner, Giuliana and Renzo find themselves once again dealing with their attraction to one another and their ambivalence about having an affair.

by Kim Hays - Fiction, Mystery

When a rave on a hot summer night erupts into violent riots in Bern, Switzerland, a young man is found the next morning bludgeoned to death with a policeman’s club. Seasoned detective Giuliana Linder is assigned to the case. That same day, an elderly organic farmer turns up dead and drenched with pesticide. Enter Giuliana’s younger --- and distractingly attractive --- colleague, Renzo Donatelli, to investigate the second murder. When an unexpected discovery ties the two victims into a single case, Giuliana and Renzo are thrown closer together than ever before. Dangerously close. Will Giuliana be able to handle the threats to her marriage and to her assumptions about the police?