Investigation into the shooting death of German best-selling author Alexandra Fröhlich

German police are investigating the death of German novelist Alexandra Fröhlich as a murder after she was found shot dead on her houseboat in Hamburg.

The Guardian quotes a German police spokesperson as saying that relatives found the woman "lifeless on her houseboat and notified the fire department, who were only able to confirm her death."

Fröhlich, 58, began her writing career, focusing on journalism, in Ukraine, where she founded a magazine. Her first novel, "My Russian Mother-in-Law and Other Disasters," was published in 2012, based on her own personal experience as the wife of a Russian man. It sold 50,000 copies, becoming a huge success and appearing on Spiegel's bestseller list.

That first work was followed by a sequel, Traveling with Russians (2014), and later he wrote a crime novel, Death is a Certainty (2016), and Skeletons in the Closet (2019).