book: The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion

book: The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion | Friedrich Durrenmatt ...

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	• The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion Friedrich Durrenmatt University Of Chicago Press, 2006 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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these are classics

These are two classics. I hesitate to call them "mysteries", because they are not just whodunits, but despite their short length they also explore moral and philosophical issues. I don't want to say anything about the plots, because there are some nice surprises which I do not want to spoil. I wouldn't even say as much as the "Product Description". Suffice it to say that when a 70-something year old detective who is dying of cancer chases after really bad criminals, this can lead to some tense situations. By the way, Durrenmatt also wrote the book on which the movie "The Pledge" was based, so that should give you some idea of what kinds of stories he wrote --- although the two novels in this volume are somewhat different. These were orginally written in German in the 1950's, and the translation here seems pretty good.

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This volume offers bracing new translations of two precursors to the modern detective novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, whose genre-bending mysteries recall the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet and anticipate the postmodern fictions of Paul Auster and other contemporary neo-noir novelists. Both mysteries follow Inspector Barlach as he moves through worlds in which the distinction between crime and justice seems to have vanished. In The Judge and His Hangman, Barlach forgoes the arrest of a murderer in order to manipulate him into killing another, more elusive criminal. And in Suspicion, Barlach pursues a former Nazi doctor by checking into his clinic with the hope of forcing him to reveal himself. The result is two thrillers that bring existential philosophy and the detective genre into dazzling convergence.

(20070204)

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