The Spoke

Maybe this deserves more. I've been spoiled, I imagine by people like Frisch and Durrenmatt. The oddest thing about this book is how so not odd it is.

The author, to quote from the book 'died aged fourty-two, a few days before he was due to be married. Diagnosed a schizophrenic, addicted to morphine and opium, he spent much of his life in psychiatric wards, insane asylums and, when he was arrested for forging prescriptions, in prison. He also spent two years with the Foreign Legion in North Africa...' As Manny said, it screams biopic...and they wouldn't even have to make up a thing.

Yet the book is understated, straightforward in that Swiss/German way I keep noticing. It has interesting political and social points to make about society show more just prior to World War Two. It looks at rural German Switzerland and makes that anything but dull.

He is, I gather a 'cult' figure in Europe and Germany's highest crime fiction award is named after him. I can see why. show less

Maybe this deserves more. I've been spoiled, I imagine by people like Frisch and Durrenmatt. The oddest thing about this book is how so not odd it is.

The author, to quote from the book 'died aged fourty-two, a few days before he was due to be married. Diagnosed a schizophrenic, addicted to morphine and opium, he spent much of his life in psychiatric wards, insane asylums and, when he was arrested for forging prescriptions, in prison. He also spent two years with the Foreign Legion in North Africa...' As Manny said, it screams biopic...and they wouldn't even have to make up a thing.

Yet the book is understated, straightforward in that Swiss/German way I keep noticing. It has interesting political and social points to make about society show more just prior to World War Two. It looks at rural German Switzerland and makes that anything but dull.

He is, I gather a 'cult' figure in Europe and Germany's highest crime fiction award is named after him. I can see why. show less

Maybe this deserves more. I've been spoiled, I imagine by people like Frisch and Durrenmatt. The oddest thing about this book is how so not odd it is.

The author, to quote from the book 'died aged fourty-two, a few days before he was due to be married. Diagnosed a schizophrenic, addicted to morphine and opium, he spent much of his life in psychiatric wards, insane asylums and, when he was arrested for forging prescriptions, in prison. He also spent two years with the Foreign Legion in North Africa...' As Manny said, it screams biopic...and they wouldn't even have to make up a thing.

Yet the book is understated, straightforward in that Swiss/German way I keep noticing. It has interesting political and social points to make about society show more just prior to World War Two. It looks at rural German Switzerland and makes that anything but dull.

He is, I gather a 'cult' figure in Europe and Germany's highest crime fiction award is named after him. I can see why. show less

This series of Crime novels take place in Switzerland and feature Sergeant Studer. In this one a man is murdered in an unusual way by means of a sharpened bicycle spoke thrust into his body.
There are a couple of other odd things about this case,one is that a suspect is an owner of a piglet which he treats like a baby and takes to bed with him. Another,a stutterer,can speak quite plainly when communicating in a darkened room. Studer sets out to solve the case but before he does there is another murder,but finally the true villain is brought to justice and a whole village is saved from ruin.
The author who died when he was forty-two just before his wedding day,was a schizophrenic and addicted to drugs. He spent much of his life in insane show more asylums and in prison. All that apart,he certainly writes first-class crime fiction with a distinct difference. show less