Preamble
If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here. Or check out my short story collection featuring Victorian female detective Meinir Davies; preorder now!
Review (5 out of 5)
This is one of a pair of ‘Inspector Barlach mysteries’ by Dürrenmatt, but I have yet to read Suspicion! I read it in the Pushkin Vertigo edition, rather than the ‘double bill’ publication of Joel Agee’s translations.
The brisk novel(la) follows a terminally ill Inspector Barlach and his proxy investigator, Tschanz, as they investigate the death of one of Barlach’s officers, Schmied, who has been found shot dead in his car at the side of the road. The investigation quickly leads to a master criminal, Richard Gastmann, who stands in the role of arch-nemesis to Barlach. The relationship between criminal and detective is deep-rooted; erstwhile friends, a bet about whether it was possible to commit the ‘perfect crime’ sets Gastmann on his road to, well, perfecting his crimes, while Barlach must do whatever it takes to prevent it.
The novel presents both an intricate detective puzzle and a moral puzzle around the murder of Schmied and the guilt of Gastmann. My reviews often contain spoilers, but I won’t spoil this one, especially as the novel itself is such a short read. (Although Pushkin don’t have such qualms in describing the book!)
We have much that is good about detective fiction, from characters with hidden depths to plot turns that avoid jarring the reader only thanks to Dürrenmatt’s skill. Dürrenmatt’s detective fiction generally contains what might be thought of as a didactic or theoretical element, and here he uses the puzzle(s) as an opportunity to explore opposing theories of detective work—the modern and ‘scientific’ methods represented by the Chicago School in the figure of Lutz, set against Barlach’s more intuitive understanding of people and their motivations, honed over decades of experience. But unlike The Pledge, this is not the dominant theme of the novel, and it integrates perfectly well as simply character-building for Barlach.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Judge and His Hangman was Book 28 of my 2022 reading adventure. It just took me a long time to write up this review! You can see (on X) the whole thread for 2022, and look back to 2021, or read the list here.
Dominique Gracia 
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