My Inner Child Wants to Murder Mindfully

Karsten Dusse

‘It’s never too late to have an unhappy childhood. It is also never too late to have a happy childhood.’

LAWYER turned murderer Björn Diemel is seeking his inner peace after some unfortunate (and some perhaps more fortunate!) killings so when his wise mindfulness coach points him in the direction of his ‘inner child,’ it might just be the solution to his problems.

Enjoy a truly ‘arresting’ start to your new year of reading by indulging in the sheer comic joy of My Inner Child Wants to Murder Mindfully, the hilarious follow-up to German lawyer and now novelist Karsten Dusse’s dark and sublimely entertaining crime debut, Murder Mindfully, which sold over two-and-a-half million copies and became a major Netflix series.

In a translation from the German by Florian Duijsens, which expertly picks up Dusse’s complex nuances and black humour, this new satirical gem once again achieves what might seem to be the impossible... the melding of a riotous killing romp with a perfectly authentic guide to the calming power of mindfulness.

Dusse (pictured left) has been writing for television formats for a number of years, and has won the German Television Award and the German Comedy Prize several times, and he has a ball with these murderously clever plots, using his legal background and eye for visual drama to dish up one restless man’s wicked and wellness-inspired dance of death.

There will be no more corpses… well, that’s the plan. With the help of his therapist, Joschka Breitner, lawyer Björn Diemel has mastered the principles of mindfulness and used them to improve his life. He quit his stressful job, started his own practice and really wants to stop murdering people. To this end, Björn now spends more time with his precious young daughter Emily and argues less – and usually more lovingly – with his estranged wife Katherina.

On top of all that, busy Björn is also running two mafia clans with ease after murdering the boss of one clan and locking the boss of the other in the basement of little Emily’s kindergarten (it was bought by Björn to ensure his child can keep her place there).

So why can’t Björn enjoy any of this, and why does he keep losing his temper? Unfortunately for him, his mafia prisoner Boris in the basement is getting restless, the parents’ committee at his Emily’s pre-school is clamouring for his attention, and to cap it all, he’s also being blackmailed.

To manage all this stress, Björn turns once again to Breitner, his trusty mindfulness coach, and learns about the (as yet) unmet needs of his inner child. And as he begins listening to this inner child, he discovers he is now able to comfortably blame his parents for everything from general irritability to several murders. Even better, his inner child is providing solutions, creative ways he can solve his problems… all of them. The trouble is, they involve murder.

My Inner Child Wants to Murder Mindfully is a triumph of twisted storytelling and scintillating satire as Dusse immerses readers deep inside the bizarre and brutal life of Björn... a life that should, in theory, be disturbing but instead dishes up a feast of unexpected feelgoods, eye-watering psychological insight, and humour with a deliciously dark and cynical flavour. To leaven all the chaos, bone-crunching violence and fast-paced action, each chapter begins with one of coach Breitner’s incisive mindfulness observations, a reminder of the stresses that bedevil modern life and that it was the author’s own rewards from practising self-help and mindfulness that inspired these razor-sharp satirical comedies.

With a host of useful meditation and mindfulness tips, suspense at every turn of the page, and a lead player with a killer line in comedy, it would be a crime to miss the fun! 
(Faber & Faber, paperback, £9.99)