American Author Turns Bern Into A Stage For Murder Mysteries

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) The fourth novel in the crime series Polizei Bern is hitting American bookstores now. Its author, Kim Hays, who has lived in Switzerland for 37 years, targets US audiences, but her mix of controversial issues and skeletons in the closet has thrilled Swiss readers too. This content was published on April 20, 2025 - 10:30 8 minutes

As an online editor at the Portuguese department who is in charge of SWI swissinfo's culture coverage, I work as reporter, editor, art & film critic, while also coordinating freelance collaborations. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, I studied Film and Economics but made a career in journalism in several capacities (reporter, editor, international correspondent) before moving to documentary films, as developer and producer, and then to visual arts (in art publishing and as a curator). I joined SWI swissinfo in 2017, where I could bring all this broad experience to the coordination of our cultural section.

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Switzerland is a very safe country. In 2024, there were 45 murdersExternal link in the country of roughly 9 million people. In the canton of BernExternal link , seven murders were recorded last year, and all were solved. So, is Switzerland in general – and its capital Bern in particular – an appropriate setting for crime thrillers?

“Sure!” says the American author Kim Hays in Zurich. The fourth novel in her crime series based in the Swiss city is now hitting bookshops in the United States. The books will also be available in a few Swiss shops, but Hays says she wrote her Polizei Bern series for an American audience.

“ I hoped that some Swiss people would read it, but the books are in English,” she says.“Of course I would like them to be translated into German.” She explains that under the terms of her contract, the translation rights remain with her US publisher, Seventh Street Books in New Jersey, until three years after publication, and translations are very expensive.

Even so, the novels have found their way home. Hays says she was surprised to receive emails from Swiss readers.“Not many”, she says, but more than expected. As for reviews,“unfortunately, I haven't had any in the New York Times”, but she has found resonance in a few specialised crime literature outlets as well as in Kirkus Reviews, a magazine for the publishing world.

As an expatriate who has lived for 37 years in Switzerland, Hays was lucky to find a US publisher without the help of a literary agent. She began looking for an agent when she first started writing her novels in 2012 but was rejected time and again. When she eventually struck a deal with Seventh Street Books, she already had the first three titles ready. The first one, Pesticide, was published in 2022.

Agents and publishers who had previously rejected her book doubted readers would be drawn by the Swiss setting, she says.“One agent wrote me back and said, 'Well, if your book was set in Paris, we might be interested.' To which I thought, 'There are already so many mysteries set in Paris. Doesn't she realize this?'”

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