The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Chess with Tennessee Williams 

Reading the Barlach Mysteries is like watching a one-act play by Tennessee Williams while playing chess against Garry Kasparov. The drama is tight as a drum. Every character is perfectly placed. Every move is in the open. But you know you are going to lose in the battle of wits, and you don't know how.

Durrenmatt writes with the precision of ... well, a Swiss watch. But because he tosses in the odd commentary on the Swiss class-system and the snobbery of small countries, he's never stuffy. In these two stories, there's more character development about the scenery than there is about the actors. But this is precisely correct. Each character is an element, a cog, in what are very well running little narrative machines.

Hans Barlach must be unique among fictional detectives. An over-the-hill cop on the verge of both retirement and death. Who has no use for any of the tricks of the trade, neither conventional nor high-tech. Who is more concerned with justice than the law or his conviction record. Who creates the evidence and circumstances he needs. As he says, "It's carelessness that makes the world a bad place." And Barlach is anything but careless.

And he also has something to say about current affairs. Although set in 1948, Barlach predicts, "A single dunce at the head of a world power, and we'll be carried off by the floods." Get your ark ready.

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