The Pledge (1958)

whilst a good and compelling read, it bore little resemblance to the reviews I read of it after I read it and before I wrote this

fine suspense, fine writing
but different ( )

Intriguing crime story in which Dürrenmatt speculates about the whole premise of detective fiction: does the ingenuity of the detective really play as big a role as we would like to think, or are crimes really solved by a combination of patience and pure chance? Of course, we're meant to read this as a broader question about human agency and the absurdity of life, set against a discussion about the authority of the writer in fiction. Very neatly done: the philosophical discussion doesn't overwhelm the story; the reader gets a crime, a maverick detective, and a clever hypothesis; there's plenty of rain, snow and Zürich atmosphere; and the whole thing is neatly wrapped up in 150 pages. So, perfect discussion material for a literature class, but also perfectly readable for pleasure as a straight crime story. Two for the price of one!
Minor niggle: we're very wrapped up in the fate of the detective and his chief (the inner narrator), so we do rather lose track of the other characters involved, and of the crime itself. ( )

This book, originally subtitled “Requiem for the Detective Novel,” is narrated by a former chief of police who is telling a mystery writer about a real-life crime he was once involved with. About ten years ago, a young girl was brutally murdered in the woods near a small Swiss village. The police chief’s best detective, Inspector Matthäi, was assigned to the case. At first, the outcome seemed simple: a peddler named von Gunten was seen in the area, and he had razor blades in his possession which could have been used to murder the girl. However, Matthäi eventually came to believe that von Gunten was innocent, and he had solemnly promised the dead girl’s mother that he would find the true killer. The rest of the police chief’s story tells of Matthäi’s attempts to catch the murderer and the ultimate outcome of his investigation.

This is another book I had to read for class, and once again it was an unusual take on the detective genre. Rather than focusing on the externals of the “whodunit,” it spends most of its time on the internal psychology of Matthäi. I like the fact that the story is told in multiple layers of narrative; it adds some interesting ambiguities to the ending of the novel. Although a solution to the crime is offered, the book leaves a little bit of a question in the reader’s mind. This would drive me crazy in an ordinary mystery novel, but in this case I think it makes the story even more compelling. The novel also raises some very interesting questions about the role of law in society, and also about the importance of storytelling to humanity. The overall tone of the book is bleak, but I still found it fascinating, and it definitely made me think.

Always interesting to pick up a book by a "world-famous" author whom I've never heard of. This was translated from the original German (the author is Swiss) and is a strange tale of a police captain who makes a pledge to find a child killer, which he keeps in his own peculiar way. The story is very artificial in that it is told by the captain's chief to the narrator, who just finished a lecture on mystery stories. At the end, the chief even proposes a number of endings to make the story more satisfactory. This is followed by an ending - but my assumption is that it is an artificial one, in the spirit of the chief's suggestions, to tie up the story in some way. The book is engaging, short, and well-written (or translated) and has a certain fascination. While not exactly a scintillating and happy read, I do suspect that its premise will stick with me a bit longer than those of some of its more sensationalistic brethren. ( )

A police detective’s relentless search to find a child-murderer in this unconventional story of guilt, responsibility, justice, and fate from the Swiss writer, Friedrich Duerrenmatt. . . Sean Penn made this into a pretty decent movie with Jack Nicholson. ( )