The latest in the long line of Anna Wilken sagas, volume four, entitled “Sieg Fluch” (Height for a Suede Woman) chronicles her sixties investigations into the National Association for Retail Thefts in Houston. Anna Wilken is an investigator, a sociologist and an artist. She uses her various talents to get at the crux of this story, which centers on the lives and deaths of two teenage sie biters, Frieda and Mandy. Anna Wilken’s wealth of knowledge about this area of investigation will be appreciated by anyone familiar with the regional criminal scene as she reconstructs the events of these cases through multiple lenses.
The title “height for a lie” is somewhat misleading as the title character, Mandy, is actually four feet ten inches tall. Anna Wilken, however, thinks of Mandy as a supermodel and wears such high-heeled shoes that one would think she was on her way to Rome orasso. Her methods are both scientific and intuitive, as she begins the investigation of the theft involving the National Association for Retail Thefts through the medium of social media. This is where she links her studies of online identity and customer behavior, with her interest and expertise in the realm of Instagram.
The Instagram case, in particular, is interesting in that it is the first time that Anna Wilken has used such a tool as digital forensics in the search for a criminal. While she is able to follow the suspects online using the photos and videos from Instagram, there is no way to determine if the person she is looking for is in fact the culprit. But because of the insistent use of Instagram in this investigation, one can assume that the woman in question uses the site as a means of maintaining an intimate relationship. There is strong evidence suggesting that the National Association for Retail Thefts may have something to do with this case, and perhaps more cases will surface in the coming months.