Holy Blood: The return of the heirs
A novel by Amir Vaziri

Between 2016 and 2019, two young people were murdered in a strange manner in the Kahramanmaras refugee camps in Turkey and Moria in Greece. The two victims, a young girl and a young man from Iran, had all the blood sucked out of their bodies.

The local, inexperienced police officers are faced with a mystery. No one seems interested in solving the murders of the refugees. Only when another murder with the same modus operandi occurs in 2021, in the middle of the Cologne Carnival, does the experienced, yet unorthodox, detective inspector Bruno Haberl takes over the investigation.

After some time, he is informed by a UN employee, a certain Helen Shaw, about the other two murders in Turkey and Greece. Due to a lack of personnel and the lack of support from police superiors, Habrel is forced to involve Shaw in his investigation.

Their joint research brings to light some disturbing and, at times, difficult-to-understand truths about the murders. The group of amateur investigators surrounding the Cologne commissioner, meanwhile, grows ever larger. The two are joined one after the other by Jessi Mobuto, a UNHCR employee, and the shady Iranian and former police officer Parvis Amiri, who initially has to be granted leave from Moabit prison.

Soon, the gang of four must, in addition to solving the three murders, also take care of the protection of two potential victims, the twin children Ramin and Minoo, and bring them from Amsterdam to Cologne.

It takes some research and trips to the crime scenes in Kahramanmaras and Moria to find at least some weak evidence of the murderer's motives.

All the evidence and clues lead Haberl and his team to ancient Persia and the time of the prophet Zarathustra. All of the victims are descendants of the Zoroastrians in the Iranian city of Yazd. Therefore, the murderer appears to have their sights set on their, apparently unique, blood. Even if the killer's modus operandi is no longer a secret, his motives remained obscure for a long time.