Knock-out

A murder. A city on edge. And a killer who believes he has thought of everything.Years have passed, and George Bracke's life has changed dramatically. His marriage to Annemie is over, his international career lies behind him, and he has returned to the Ghent police — this time as its chief. Older, more reflective but no less stubborn, Bracke is trying to come to terms with the losses and choices that have shaped his life.Then a routine welfare check on the Muide leads to the discovery of the murdered Mieke Tindemans. Her apartment has been ransacked, her cat injured, and the evidence immediately points investigators towards the people closest to her. Among them is her former husband Gerard Janssens, a successful businessman with a taste for boxing, motorcycles, whisky — and an unsettling fascination with unsolved murders.Bracke and his team begin to unravel a web of lies, grudges and carefully constructed alibis. But just as the murder investigation gathers momentum, an explosion elsewhere in Ghent throws the city into turmoil and opens an entirely different line of inquiry. With pressure mounting from the media and the public, Bracke must rely on both old allies and a new generation of investigators to separate coincidence from calculation.At the same time, the people around him are facing battles of their own. Werner Van Aken is learning to live with Parkinson's disease, Bracke is still haunted by the deaths of Gert and Saartje, and unexpected news from his daughter Julie forces him to confront the possibility that after years of loss, life may still have something new to offer.Dark, character-driven and firmly rooted in the streets of Ghent, Knock-Out combines a classic murder investigation with the personal story that has run throughout the George Bracke series. And when the final pieces of evidence fall into place, Bracke knows exactly what to call them: a knock-out.Knock-Out is Book 10 in the George Bracke thriller series.About the authorStefaan Van Laere, born in Belgium in 1963, is an author, journalist and publisher. He has worked as a professional journalist since 1988 for numerous magazines, newspapers and online publications in Belgium and abroad and is the founder of Partizaan Publishers. His fiction and non-fiction books have appeared in multiple languages, including Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Italian.His George Bracke thrillers combine crime and police investigation with psychological depth, dark humour and the evolving private lives of their recurring characters, with the historic city of Ghent providing a distinctive backdrop.