It tells the story of a physics professor who is told he has to kill a man in order to get his kidnapped son back, and a detective, Schilf, who steps in to solve the case.

She described the character Schilf as "sort of my brother-in-mind", and identified strongly with him while writing.

[1] Brigitte Helbling of Welt am Sonntag compared the novel's use of scientific concepts to Michel Houellebecq's Atomised and the works of Thomas Pynchon, and reflected that "theoretical physics as an aid to explaining the world" has become "the new religion, the new philosophy in the modern novel".

Helbling wrote that with so much plotting and stylistic content as there is in Dark Matter, one would wonder how it would be possible to piece the book together: "Other authors would go belly-up with such a cargo.

[3] The film adaptation Schilf directed by Claudia Lehmann [de] premiered in 2011.