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    The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion
    The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion
    The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion
    Ebook254 pages4 hours

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

    By Friedrich Durrenmatt, Joel Agee and Sven Birkerts

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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. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateFeb 15, 2017
    ISBN9780226530710
    The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion
    Author

    Friedrich Durrenmatt

    Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990) was a Swiss author and dramatist, most famous for his plays The Visit and The Physicists, which earned him a reputation as one of the greatest playwrights in the German language. He also wrote four highly regarded crime novels - The Pledge, The Judge and His Hangman, Suspicion and The Execution of Justice, all of which will be published by Pushkin Vertigo.

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    Reviews for The Inspector Barlach Mysteries

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    • 4/5
      Excellent! I read this a long time ago, but still recall the weird sense of dread that it seemed to instill in me...
    • 4/5
      These stories are perhaps not as good as The Pledge - which is one of the most chilling stories of obsession I've ever read, and I am amazed noone's turned into film, because it seems obvious film material. However, The Judge and his Hangman is similarly obsessive and creepy, but Suspicion doesn't quite work for me. Although the premise of the story - Barlach discovers the identity of a war criminal working in a Swiss hospital and has himself checked into the hospital to confront him - is fine, there are too many deus ex machina moments, and the conclusion seems unlikely. I realise that Durrenmatt is not interested in the police procedural per se, but uses it as a way of expressing ideas about Swiss society and its lack of willingness to face up to uncomfortable truths, but still, if you use that format, then you need to take it to a sensible conclusion for the genre and for me, Suspicion doesn't do that. The Judge and His Hangman is highly recommended and if you haven't read The Pledge, you really should
    • 4/5
      The first of these two novellas, The Judge and His Hangman, is excellent. Reads like one of the best noirs I've ever seen. Just a masterful translation. The second is decent, though more play-like and has less of the landscape descriptions that make the first so enjoyable. On this latter point, I was reminded of Cormac McCarthy's dark and beautiful prose. Also the use of genre for broader purposes, without losing sight of the appeal of the genre to begin with.
    • 4/5
      Only: The Judge and His Hangmanby [author: Friedrich Dürrenmatt translated by Joel Agee
      4 stars
      This short novella, by Swiss playwright and author, Friedrich Dürrenmatt features the ailing Inspector Barlach in this crime fiction that is not only entertaining but thought provoking. A police officer is found shot and dead in his car at the side of the road. There is an ancient wager between old friends. The nihilist and the moralist. It is a chess game to the end. I highly recommend this quick read of less than 100 pages if you like crime fiction.
    • 5/5
      Inspector Barlach is nearing the end of his life, terminally ill with a stomach complaint. In the first novella The Judge and His Hangman a policeman is found murdered. He was last seen, working undercover, at a party being given by a criminal whom Barlach has been trying to convict all of his life. However Barlach is pretty sure that his old enemy is not responsible for the murder and he involves the suspect in the investigation.In Suspicion Barlach is in hospital awaiting an operation to prolong his life when his doctor recognises a Nazi war criminal in a photo in Life magazine. Barlach decides to put his own life on the line by entering a clinic run by the war criminal. It is a close run thing, but Barlach gets some timely assistance from an unlikely source.Although these novellas are police procedurals, there's quite a different flavour to them to more modern novels. In the foreword Sven Birketts says Dürrenmatt "comes very close to abandoning the realist conventions of the genre". Again he says Dürrenmatt is "a moralist/philosopher by temperament", and there is certainly a lot more philosophical discussion in both novellas than we would expect to find in a modern police procedural. This does tend to make for slower reading.
    • 5/5
      A very interesting provocative book, classifiable as mystery but it's much more. Splendid writing and excellent story telling.
    • 4/5
      This omnibus edition has two stories, "The Judge and his Hangman" and "Suspicion".I read the first one many years ago in German class in high school, as "Der Richter und sein Henker". It was a struggle to read in German, and I remember being most glad to be able to finish. Rereading it decades in English, it is a completely new story to me. Inspector Barlach battles a failing career, poor health (ominous stomach pains), and modern changes to police work, to pursue an old nemesis. Many years ago, in an unfortunate incident, this nemesis bet Barlach that he could commit a crime in his presence in a public location and get away with it. Barlach has one last chance bring him to justice, and to solve a murder.This is a great detective story: it starts with a murder found on an isolated road. Barlach has clues but keeps them to himself while working with a young detective who uses a scientific approach to tracking the killer down. Political influences intervene, and difficulties multiply. In a wonderful scene, an attempt is made on Barlach's life at night. The story has a twisted ending, but loose ends are all tied up nicely.The second story, "Suspicion" finds Barlach in his hospital bed recovering from surgery. A photo in Life magazine reveals that a notorious Nazi concentration camp doctor may be practicing medicine at a nearby upscale clinic. Barlach investigates from his hospital bed and checks into the clinic. Here he meets with pure unadulterated evil, against which is arrayed Barlach and his associates, including a Jewish survivor of horrific concentration camp experiences. "Suspicion" does not have the kind of complete plot development that "The Judge and his Hangman" does, but it is a good deal more intense and even chilling.These stories were written shortly after World War II. The back blurb calls it "existential philosophy"; in the text the term used is "nihilism" for the Nazi doctor. But whatever term is used, in both stories, Durrenmatt confronts the nature of amoral evil head on.
    • 4/5
      Okay, both novelettes included in this book - The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion are excellent. Durrenmatt's writing is well above-average and both stories keep the reader in suspense (more or less) throughout the novel -- largely, because the author is playing with the reader on a psychological level. I enjoyed the first story more than the second one (which had some parts which were a bit too violent for my tastes. Having been to Switzerland, I enjoyed the references in both stories to places in Switzerland and Germany. If you like suspense and a mystery, this book and his other novel - the Pledge (or promise) are both quite good.
    • 5/5
      It is my personal belief that a truly great detective novel always opens with the discovery of a body. Friedrich Durrenmatt's novella The Judge and the Hangman does just that. The body of a police inspector has been found in a car parked on a lonely road. The village police man who found it, drove the car into down, the body still in the passenger seat, and filed his report. Inspector Barlach, at the end of his career and at the end of his life, he is suffering from a terminal illness, soon arrives and begins his investigation.There are essentially two reason to read detective novels: the complexities of the plot, and the character of the detective. Some may argue that the writing style is a third reason, but I think this is so closely tied to the character of the detective that the two can't be wholly separated, they are one in the same. Soon after we meet Inspector Barlach he begins his investigation, and I suspect whether or not you love him as much as I did depends on how you react to this scene."Where was the car, Clenin?" (Barlach asked.)"Here," the policeman replied, pointing at the pavement, "almost in the middle of the road, " and since Barlach was hardly paying any attention, "Maybe it would have been better if I had left the car here with the body inside.""Why?" Barlach asked, looking up at the cliffs of the Jura mountains. "The dead should be removed as quickly as possible, there's no reason why they should stick around. You were right to drive Schmied back to Biel."Barlach stepped to the edge of the road and looked down over Twann. There was nothing but vineyards between him and the old village. The sun had already set. The road curved like a snake between the houses, and a long freight train stood waiting in the station."Didn't anyone hear anything down there, Clenin?" he asked. "The village is nearby. You would hear a shot.""No one heard anything down except the sound of the motor running all night, and no one thought that meant anything bad had happened.""Of course not, why would they." He looked at the vineyards again. "How is the wine this year, Clenin?""Good. We could try some.""Yes, I would very much like a glass of new wine."And he struck against something hard with his right foot. He bent down and picked up a small, longish piece of metal flattened in the front, and held it between his thin fingers. Clenin and Blatter leaned in to look at it more closely."A bullet," Blatter said. "From a pistol.""You've done it again, Inspector!" Clenin said admiringly."Just a coincidence," Barlach said, and they walked down the road toward Twann.Inspector Barlach, my new favorite detective. Everything he says in this scene ought to drip with sarcasm, and may do so in his mind, but Inspector Barlach plays it with a straight face, never letting on that the local policeman is a near complete idiot. And, the writing style has forced me to read every bit of that into the scene. Mr. Durrenmatt never describes Barlach's tone of voice, nor lets us in on exactly what he is thinking. We know detectives like Inspector Barlach and can fill in these details for ourselves.The plot of The Judge and His Hangman is a masterwork. We soon discover that the main suspect in the policeman's murder is a lifelong enemy of Inspector Barlach, someone the detective was unable to convict of a murder he actually saw him commit for lack of evidence. Barlach engages his old nemesis in a battle of wits that culminates in a double plot twist ending that leaves the reader satisfied and then leaves the reader satisfied again. So if you read detective novels for the plots, The Judge and His Hangman will not disappoint.
    • 2/5
      Two slim novellas that try to push the novel-of-ideas into the frame of classic detective fiction. It didn't really work for me. As genre fiction they're unsuccessful – the set-ups are extremely implausible and both stories rely heavily on dei ex machina – so the stories stand or fall on the ideas in play, which have to do with the nature of good and evil and the perfectibility of human nature.The second piece, Suspicion, is the more successful, because realism is abandoned so completely that you feel permitted to ignore the plot and concentrate on the themes. At the same time, the pages are kept turning by the insane melodrama: a mad Nazi doctor, a gigantic wandering Jew, a drug-addicted sadistic nurse, etc etc. For me, the main interest came in the details of Swiss life, both the descriptive passages and the psychic questioning over Swiss involvement in the 1939–45 war. Some of this is picked up in Sven Birkerts's rather grandiose introduction (‘having come of age in the long Walpurgisnacht of World War II, and then nourished on the bitter milk of postwar existentialism…’), which sets Dürrenmatt in context well. Joel Agee's English translation is solid and sounds very natural, with enough flashes of German left in to convey flavour – a minor plot point in the second book turns on the Bernese pronunciation of Miuchmauchterli (a Swiss German word for a milking-stool, though this is not explained in the text). Only thing I'm not quite sure of is why he changed Inspector Bärlach's name to Barlach; I'm sure most English readers aren't scared of a couple of umlauts.Overall I was left unsatisfied, but other readers may well get more out of this than I did.

    Book preview

    The Inspector Barlach Mysteries - Friedrich Durrenmatt

    picture.

    THE JUDGE AND HIS HANGMAN

    1

    On the morning of November third, 1948, Alphons Clenin, the policeman of the village of Twann, came upon a blue Mercedes parked by the side of the highway right by the woods where the road from Lamboing comes out of the Twann River gorge. It was one of those foggy mornings of which there were many in that late fall, and Clenin had already walked past the car when he decided to have another look. He had casually glanced through the clouded windows and had the impression that he had seen the driver slumped over the wheel. Being a decent and levelheaded fellow, he immediately assumed the man was drunk and decided to give him a helping hand instead of a summons. He would wake him, drive him to Twann, and sober him up with some soup and black coffee at the Bear Inn. For while drunk driving was forbidden by law, drunk sleeping in a stationary car by the side of the road was not forbidden. Clenin opened the door and laid a fatherly hand on the stranger’s shoulder. At that moment he noticed that the man was dead. He had been shot through the temples. And now Clenin saw that the door by the passenger seat was unlatched. There was little blood in the car and the dead man’s dark-gray coat wasn’t even stained. The gleaming edge of a yellow wallet stuck out of the inside pocket. Clenin pulled it out and had no trouble establishing that the dead man was Ulrich Schmied, a police lieutenant from Bern.

    Clenin didn’t quite know what to do. As a village policeman, he had never had to deal with violence of this magnitude. He paced back and forth by the side of the road. When the rising sun broke through the mist and shone on the corpse, it made him uncomfortable. He went back to the car, picked up the gray felt hat that lay at the dead man’s feet, and pulled it down over his head until he could no longer see the pierced temples. Now he felt better.

    The policeman again crossed over to the side of the road facing Twann, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Then he made a decision. He shifted the dead man onto the passenger seat, carefully propped him up, fastened him with a leather strap he found in the back of the car, and sat down behind the wheel.

    The motor wouldn’t start, but Clenin easily coasted the car down the steep road to Twann and stopped by the gas station in front of the Bear. The attendant never noticed that the distinguished-looking man sitting motionless in the front seat was dead. That was just fine with Clenin. He hated scandals.

    But as he drove along the edge of the lake toward Biel, the fog thickened again, the sun disappeared, and the morning turned dark as Judgment Day. Clenin found himself in a long line of cars that for some inexplicable reason were driving even more slowly than the weather required. Almost like a funeral procession, he thought involuntarily. The corpse sat motionless at his side, except for moments when a bump in the road made him nod like an Oriental sage. This made Clenin less and less inclined to pass the cars ahead of him. They reached Biel much later than he had expected.

    While the routine investigation of the Schmied case got under way in Biel, the sad facts were conveyed to Inspector Barlach, who had been the dead man’s superior in Bern.

    Barlach had lived abroad for many years and had made a name for himself as a criminologist, first in Constantinople and later in Germany. His last job there had been as chief of the crime division of the Frankfurt am Main police, but he had come back to his native city as early as 1933. The reason for his return was not his love of Bern—his golden grave, as he often called it—but a slap he had given a high-ranking official of the new German government. This vicious assault was the talk of Frankfurt for a while. Opinions in Bern, always sensitive to the shifts in European politics, judged it first as an inexcusable outrage, then as a deplorable but understandable act, and finally—in 1945—as the only possible thing a Swiss could have

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