The Pledge by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Swiss Banville

Should a detective story have rational plot-appeal? Must the clues and hints left by the author lead anywhere? Are the aesthetics of a mystery dependent upon its conclusion? Friedrich Durrenmatt thought decidedly not.

For Durrenmatt, it is the presence of the mystery itself, and its affect on those involved in it that is the point of the detective story. The details are important not because they add up to anything - although they might - but because the investigators are affected by what they consider facts, whether they are factual or not. That the denouement has only peripheral relevance to the investigation is almost an aside.

The rationale for this stance is that it is realistic. It is what police work is like. The narrator of the main part of the story insists that real investigation is conducted in a sea of chance. The investigative hypotheses that are formulated are at best stabs at a partial truth. Resolution, if it comes at all, is more likely to be the result of random events not deductive acumen. Clues, even relevant ones, are just as apt to lead to mis-direction.

It takes an accomplished writer to be able to pull off this kind of poke in the eye to an established genre. Durrenmatt is such a writer. The Pledge brings to mind John Banville's Benjamin Black mysteries but with the style and panache of Banville's 'serious' novels. Like Banville's mysteries, The Pledge takes place in a formerly neutral country of the post-war period. There are similar tensions between country-side and town in both Switzerland and Ireland. And the protagonists in both are distinctly eccentric as well as heavy drinkers, lurking vaguely on the edge of respectable society.

In short: An antidote to jaded tastes or boredom with your average murder mystery.

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