Post by Erasmus on May 26, 2011 16:10:00 GMT -5
Just a little cheating since I have heard this dramatized several times but not yet read it. That does not make a lot of difference because it is necessarily cast as a tale within a tale because the crucial event has to be revealed long after it happened.
The original author is Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The novel was filmed (reset in Nevada) in 2001.
Dürrenmatt was a literary figure on page and stage, so although the basic narrative is a relatively simple detective story with a nasty sting in its tail, the real theme is a study in logic leading to obsession beyond reason and destroying the main character.
It is set initially at a crime writer convention where a former police chief explains that Sherlock Holmesery is not enough: life has its own spanners to throw in the works and police are more concerned with tying a case up and getting onto the next one than with getting everything right. He then recounts the story of a brilliant subordinate who had been about to leave for a post overseas. This suited everybody since although brilliant, he was too much of a loner to promote to a more managerial position.
The year is 1957. A little village girl has been murdered some way off and an itinerant peddler with some minor offences to his name brought in for questioning. Detective Matthai has to deal with the mother and swears that he will catch the murderer even if it means deferring his appointment. By the time he returns to Zürich, the peddler, whom Matthai intended to interrogate and thinks unlikely to be the culprit, has been forced into a confession. By the time Matthai has read this and realized it cannot be true, the peddler has hanged himself. As far as the police are concerned, end of case. As far as Matthai is concerned there is a murderer out there. He takes leave and soon discovers that this is the third child to be murdered nearby (but in different cantons so he did not know), all blonde girls wearing a red dress.
He sets out on his own trying to make sense of children's stories woven into their fairy-tale setting. There was a giant or a magician, he gave them magic hedgehogs or stars or chocolate chestnuts still in the outer shell. He drove a huge car with antlers - and so on. Eventually, and to the concern of some schoolteachers wondering at his interest in the children, he makes a credible tale that leads to one road which diverges to all regions concerned. He buys a derelict filling station on that road and hires an ex-prostitute with a blonde daughter he displays prominently, wearing a red dress, to customers.
His chief is by now very worried about him. He puts little faith in children's stories and is horrified at using the girl as bait, especially as the woman known nothing of this. She thinks he's just doing her a good turn because of former run-ins, or he fancies her - anyway it's money for standing up. Only when Matthai returns to his boss triumphant that the girl has met a wizard who gave her chocolate hedgehogs and has promised to return in a few days does the chief agree to a massive stake-out. Resulting in a massive nothing.
The public prosecutor orders it off even though man and girl are certain there is a wizard. The woman walks out horrified when she learns it was all a set-up. Matthai degenerates into alcoholism waiting and waiting for the wizard he is certain nobody else has ever believed in and becomes an increasingly suspect creepy character himself.
This is all being narrated by his former chief, who has tried to get him to give it up and keep him sane. He then reveals the Diabolus e machina. Some years later a rich eccentric old woman dying in a castle near Bern called him to reveal a secret she did not want to take to the grave. She reveals that her chauffeur (or son or much younger husband - I'm not sure of which) when she had a pre-War Buick sporting the Bernese stage emblem was a big man who occasionally murdered little girls he enticed with chocolate truffles. He had been useful, they were only village nothings and as long as he did it somewhere else and not too often she couldn't care less. In any case, he died crashing it several years ago. Naturally, he rushes to tell Matthai but he is too far gone for it to sink in. He just sits waiting.
As outlined, this crash looks too neat but that is the point; life does throw spanners in the works and it is much more devils that come out of the machine to wreck the day than gods to save it. It is the kind of novel that needs to be read for its how more than for its what (in an entirely different context, like Jane Austin!) The detection work is flawless. Life, however, is flawed.
The original author is Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The novel was filmed (reset in Nevada) in 2001.
Dürrenmatt was a literary figure on page and stage, so although the basic narrative is a relatively simple detective story with a nasty sting in its tail, the real theme is a study in logic leading to obsession beyond reason and destroying the main character.
It is set initially at a crime writer convention where a former police chief explains that Sherlock Holmesery is not enough: life has its own spanners to throw in the works and police are more concerned with tying a case up and getting onto the next one than with getting everything right. He then recounts the story of a brilliant subordinate who had been about to leave for a post overseas. This suited everybody since although brilliant, he was too much of a loner to promote to a more managerial position.
The year is 1957. A little village girl has been murdered some way off and an itinerant peddler with some minor offences to his name brought in for questioning. Detective Matthai has to deal with the mother and swears that he will catch the murderer even if it means deferring his appointment. By the time he returns to Zürich, the peddler, whom Matthai intended to interrogate and thinks unlikely to be the culprit, has been forced into a confession. By the time Matthai has read this and realized it cannot be true, the peddler has hanged himself. As far as the police are concerned, end of case. As far as Matthai is concerned there is a murderer out there. He takes leave and soon discovers that this is the third child to be murdered nearby (but in different cantons so he did not know), all blonde girls wearing a red dress.
He sets out on his own trying to make sense of children's stories woven into their fairy-tale setting. There was a giant or a magician, he gave them magic hedgehogs or stars or chocolate chestnuts still in the outer shell. He drove a huge car with antlers - and so on. Eventually, and to the concern of some schoolteachers wondering at his interest in the children, he makes a credible tale that leads to one road which diverges to all regions concerned. He buys a derelict filling station on that road and hires an ex-prostitute with a blonde daughter he displays prominently, wearing a red dress, to customers.
His chief is by now very worried about him. He puts little faith in children's stories and is horrified at using the girl as bait, especially as the woman known nothing of this. She thinks he's just doing her a good turn because of former run-ins, or he fancies her - anyway it's money for standing up. Only when Matthai returns to his boss triumphant that the girl has met a wizard who gave her chocolate hedgehogs and has promised to return in a few days does the chief agree to a massive stake-out. Resulting in a massive nothing.
The public prosecutor orders it off even though man and girl are certain there is a wizard. The woman walks out horrified when she learns it was all a set-up. Matthai degenerates into alcoholism waiting and waiting for the wizard he is certain nobody else has ever believed in and becomes an increasingly suspect creepy character himself.
This is all being narrated by his former chief, who has tried to get him to give it up and keep him sane. He then reveals the Diabolus e machina. Some years later a rich eccentric old woman dying in a castle near Bern called him to reveal a secret she did not want to take to the grave. She reveals that her chauffeur (or son or much younger husband - I'm not sure of which) when she had a pre-War Buick sporting the Bernese stage emblem was a big man who occasionally murdered little girls he enticed with chocolate truffles. He had been useful, they were only village nothings and as long as he did it somewhere else and not too often she couldn't care less. In any case, he died crashing it several years ago. Naturally, he rushes to tell Matthai but he is too far gone for it to sink in. He just sits waiting.
As outlined, this crash looks too neat but that is the point; life does throw spanners in the works and it is much more devils that come out of the machine to wreck the day than gods to save it. It is the kind of novel that needs to be read for its how more than for its what (in an entirely different context, like Jane Austin!) The detection work is flawless. Life, however, is flawed.
Omega
