Forget Miss Marple, as Angela Merkel, ex-German chancellor, who after a stint dealing with transnational financial meltdowns or erratic US presidents, once the most powerful woman in the world, now a super-sleuth after retiring to the idyllic village of Kleinfreudenstadt-on-Dumpfsee on a dull lake with her quantum-chemist husband Achim, her bodyguard Mike  and her pug Putin, named after the Russian President who once surprised her with a massive Labrador to play on her canine phobia, solving crime.

In Murder at the Castle, a local aristocrat, Baron von Baugenwitz, has been murdered with vintage suit of armour in a castle dungeon locked from the inside, new life stirs in Angela. Supported by a team of helpers – foremost among them the doughty Putin – she embarks on a perilous hunt for the killer.

Which of the six female suspects is guilty?  There are already four in the original German-language series which are massively successful in their native country even being adapted for television. The notion of repurposing politicians as fictional detectives is not a new one. The experiment has been tried with Machiavelli, Roosevelt and Lincoln.

This is a compelling mystery at its core- cosy crime Deutschland style.

Murder at the Castle by David Safier, Old Street Publishing £14.99, 272 pages