Vajon krimi-e az, amiben van gyilkosság és detektív? Nem biztos. Mert ugye a sci-fit sem az teszi, hogy van benne űrhajó. Sci-fi lenne például az Ördögök, ha a végén Sztavrogint elvinné egy repülő csészealj? Nem, nem lenne sci-fi – legfeljebb egy nagyon fura orosz realista mű.

No most elképzelhető, hogy Haas műve sem annyira krimi, mint inkább a posztmodern maga, amint lektűrre sminkelte magát. Itt van mindjárt ez a rejtélyes elbeszélő: nem tudjuk, ki ő, honnan tud ennyit, sőt, kinek mesél egyáltalán és miért. Nyelve legkevésbé sem irodalmi nyelv, hadilábon áll a nyelvtannal is, leginkább egy kocsmaasztal mellé tudnánk elképzelni. És a nyomozó is milyen már? Egy inverz Poirot, akinek szürke agysejtjei mindennek nevezhetőek, csak gyors reagálású erőnek nem. Annyira idegesítően lassan esnek le neki a dolgok, mintha maga lenne az életre kelt Internet Explorer.

De ami a lényeg: meglátásom szerint az egész Haas-i koncepció lényege az egyetlen „nagy elbeszélés” tagadása. Pedig ugye a krimiben jobbára ez a lényeg: van egy „nagy elbeszélés”, maga a bűncselekmény, a detektív feladata pedig, hogy ezt a felszínre hozza. Ez pedig legalább annyira metafizikai kérdés, mint rendőri, a jó detektív pedig ezért valahol mindig filozófus. No most Haasnál nincs ilyesmi. Hatalmas lyukak tátonganak a szövegben, a detektívmunka esetleges, nincs íve, csak darabok vannak, amelyekre Brenner, a magánkopó mintegy tök véletlenül rámarkol. Hogy ebből aztán mégis lesz valami, ami nagy leleplezésnek nevezhető, szinte véletlennek tűnik, kierőszakolt engedménynek a zsáner törvényei felé.

Valaki azt írta erről a könyvről, hogy nem rossz, csak hát a stílusa. No most ebben a könyvben pont a stílus a lényeg. Ez az esetleges, legmélyebb szinten nem-irodalmi és nem-lektűri nyelv, ami talán azért született, hogy rámutasson: a krimi nem arra való, hogy a káoszból a rendbe való átmenet illúzióját megteremtse. Hanem arra, hogy magát a káoszt ábrázolja, amiben a rend legfeljebb egy pillanatnyi villódzás, amit a detektív, ha mákja van, megtalál, és belekapaszkodik. ( )

Two elderly Americans have been murdered on a ski-lift near the small Austrian resort of Zell. It's now nine months later, we're in the middle of a September heatwave, and neither the police nor ex-police-officer Brenner, who is investigating on behalf of an insurance company, have got anywhere with the case. But then, recovering from a migraine attack on the sidelines of a summer ice stock match, Brenner gets into conversation with someone who does actually seem to know something about the murders.

A nice, lively little village mystery, with the appropriate amount of rural quaintness (rustic traditions, eccentric characters, small-world coincidences, incest, buried scandals from fifty years ago, you know how it works...) and an entertainingly infuriating narrator who always seems to be wandering off the point and telling you about something else just when the story seems to be getting most interesting. A first novel, still with a few rough edges, but great fun, and someone I mean to come back to. ( )

This is the first volume of the Simon Brenner series. Brenner is a former police officer who now works as a detective. The story takes place in Zell (Austria), where over Christmas two Americans were found dead in the morning on the chairlift. At that time, Brenner was still investigating the case as a police officer from Vienna. It could not be cleared up, another reason why Brenner left the police and now continues to investigate for insurance as a detective on this case. He lives in a hotel in Zell and makes contact with all persons. He is not the fastest investigator, but he has the talent to record everything important as unimportant.
What I particularly like about this book is that as a reader you have the feeling that you are directly listening to a narrator. It's kind of like a regulars' table talk, which keeps wandering from the main story and continues on secondary squares, before returning to the actual reason. And yet these digressions are important to the whole.
Brenner is an amiable quirky person, I will definitely read his other cases as well. ( )

Simon Brenner is a 44 year-old ex-detective inspector ("or whatever his rank was") who has recently left the police after a nineteen-year career. He's on the same case he was working when he left, the strange affair of two elderly Americans found frozen to death in December on a chair lift in Zell am See, a popular ski area in the Austrian Alps. As the reader learns in the first two chapters, Brenner solved the case only after three-quarters of the year had gone by, not for the police, but for Vienna's Meierling Detective Agency, contracted by the Americans' insurance company. The police case had stalled in January; by March, as a PI for Meierling, Brenner was back. Suffering from pounding migraines, he works his way through this case with no evidence or leads; all he has is a seemingly unshakable alibi of one of the suspects given by a man who's just been released from a mental hospital.

So far, this may seem like a typical outing in the world of crime fiction, but it most definitely is not. If the author were to go straight from point A to point B with the case, the investigation and the solution, a) there would certainly be less pages in this book and b) it wouldn't be nearly as interesting or fun. The unique narration style strikes the reader immediately. It's as if he/she is being addressed by a sardonic someone who's sitting around in a bar, looking back and telling the story, complete with comments to "you," and the normal digressions a storyteller might make in such a situation, complete with character observations. As just one example of a meandering path in this book, in describing how Brenner took a taxi ride hoping for information from a talkative cabbie, the narrator turns that into a discourse on the sport of curling, rich tourists and poor tipping, as well as the way Brenner eats a sausage on a bun. Yet hidden among this often darkly humorous, tangential material are not only clues essential to solving the crime, but there is a lot of insight into Brenner's character, the issues faced by the permanent residents in this tourist mecca, and the ugly past of this otherwise outwardly postcard-perfect area.

Since I've already read the author's Brenner and God, it's pretty obvious that in this book he's just getting started on developing Brenner's character, but that's usually the case in a first series novel. The crime, once solved, proves to be cleverly plotted and I didn't guess the who or the why. I also happened to enjoy the quirkiness of Haas' writing style, but I can see how it might not be everyone's cup of tea. The story digresses and the meandering may be a little off-putting for a reader who's in this solely for the crime. However, for patient readers who are willing to take a chance on something very different in the crime-fiction zone, while it takes some initial bit of getting used to, Resurrection turns out to be a very good and quite satisfying read, punctuated here and there with bits of dark humor keeping it lively. Recommended. ( )