Karsten Dusse is well-known in Germany as a lawyer, TV star and very funny man. MURDER MINDFULLY is his first novel, and it's a doozy. This magnificently conceived book amply demonstrates all of his talents and does so in a stunning fashion that will leave many readers, including this one, with huge smiles and awe that such a humorous piece jumps off the pages of a pretty gory murder novel.

There are two major fascinating factors that Dusse generously dishes out to his hungry audience. The first is a protagonist who is absolutely unique. Björn Diemel is an attorney on whom an awful client has been imposed by the law firm for which he works. Dragan Sergowicz (what a terrific name for a thoroughly vicious villain) uses Björn as a guide to an escape route to evade convictions for his many ruthless crimes. He's an international criminal involved in every kind of violent crime we can imagine. Especially murder. Murder with no shame, guilt or expectation of consequences. Dragan has learned to depend on Björn, his rather charming, brilliant and semi-slimy lawyer, for legal representation that always works to guarantee freedom for him to move on to his next unfortunate victims --- those who have made him simply unhappy or vainly attempted to cross him.

"[D]espite all the frightening vibes about human nature that the novel emits, I must say that if there's any unambiguous justice in our screwed-up, upside-down world, MURDER MINDFULLY should sell about a trillion copies."

But Björn and Dragan run into a roadblock. The latter has committed such an ugly and heinous murder that Björn says he can't figure out a way to defend him. Dragan says something like, "You better figure it out or your seven-year-old daughter will bear the consequences." Big mistake. Björn's daughter, Emily, is the love of his life. And now it's time to unveil fascinating factor number two: mindfulness. Björn's wife is understandably sick and tired of his dependence on a criminal for survival. Dragan has taken all of Björn's time, interest and life. So Björn decides to try mindfulness as a pathway out of his impossible position. He visits a master of mindfulness named Joschka Breitner, and before too long, he becomes convinced that mindfulness is the answer to his problems.

Mindfulness, by definition, is a system and a practice that maintains that the real key to happiness and personal fulfillment --- the road to the ultimate achievement of one's goals --- is (complexities notwithstanding) total concentration on the NOW, the present, and the shedding of everything that may interfere with that concentration. So if I'm opening the door, I'm opening the door. Period. I will not and cannot be concerned about side issues and consequences. What will I face on the other side? Doesn't matter. What if there's danger there? Doesn't matter. What if my boss wants a closed door there? Doesn't matter. The only thing that matters, the only reality, is that I'm opening the door. Or I'm driving a car. Or I'm cheating on my spouse. Or I'm committing murder, consequences be damned.

The whole focus of Björn's life is mindfulness as he perceives it. If I'm achieving my goal, in this case freeing myself from the clutches of a murderous thug, I'm freeing myself. No shame, no guilt, no consequences, no past, no future. None of that counts. Dragan has threatened the life of my daughter. He must disappear. For good.

However, there ARE consequences, of course. The details of the murder of the gangster, as related through Björn's first-person narration, are all at once very grisly and quite funny. But his new dangers as a result of his ridding himself of his disgusting client are overwhelming. Now Björn must deal with the members of Dragan's gang as several of them pursue the newly empty leadership role; the leader of the gang that had been Dragan's competitor in pursuit of the title of King of the Mob; and the police, who suspect that he has killed his old client. After all, the murderer of a murderer is still a murderer.

The rest of this most unusual novel depicts Björn's brilliant methods of dealing with those enemies. Obviously --- to him, at least --- most of them must be destroyed. Otherwise, the rest of his life will be a continuous escape plan. So instead of escaping, he decides to use his new-found freedom from guilt and other "side issues" to begin a string of murders. By this time in the novel, mindfulness itself seems like another character, a sly demon urging Björn on to commit more and more murders. It strikes me that the title of the piece might be accurately rendered as "Murder by Mindfulness." So much of the novel, to our twisted delight, may be rightly described as a mindfully murderous multiplicity of humorous horrors.

The book’s wonderfully ubiquitous humor is not --- to me, anyway --- laugh-out-loud funniness. It's even better: a novel full of smile-inducing lines that highlight each page of clever dialogue and authentic-sounding narrative. For these plusses, we should give some credit to the German-to-English translator, Florian Duijsens. Much of the style and phrasing captures the sound of us native English speakers (British and American) communicating with each other when we're in semi-evil moods and modes.

Another perhaps easily overlooked strength of the novel is Dusse's implied comment on our goofy human nature --- the fact that those characters or real-life human beings who are presented to us as heroes but are also deeply flawed (think murderers) still seize our sympathy. We forgive their overwhelming evils: Macbeth, Hamlet, Dexter of TV fame, Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, and hundreds more, including Björn Diemel, a sly criminal operator who garners our support from the beginning to the grisly end of his adventures. What is the balance and the reality, I sometimes ask, between our own terribly ambiguous and questionable choices regarding good and evil?

Finally, in the interest of fairness, I should point out that mindfulness is viewed by many practitioners, both lay and medical, as potentially an extremely beneficial system that can lead to help in pain relief, the search for personal happiness, the ability to concentrate fully on the task at hand, and our quest for less stress and tension in our lives. And I'm sure Björn agrees. But despite all the frightening vibes about human nature that the novel emits, I must say that if there's any unambiguous justice in our screwed-up, upside-down world, MURDER MINDFULLY should sell about a trillion copies.