Once again Friedrich Dürrenmatt proves himself master of suspense and psychological insight.
The Swiss author, highly critical of conventional detective novels, wrote The Pledge
as a counter to the prevailing genre. Here we're given a story where a
writer of detective fiction takes a long car ride with a former Zürich
chief police inspector who relates a murder case that happened nine
years ago. Thus we have a good old-fashioned frame tale in the spirit of
Guy de Maupassant and Honoré de Balzac, the perfect medium for Friedrich
Dürrenmatt to heighten suspense and underscore his criticism of all
those conventions and clichés found in contemporary crime fiction.
First
off, the chief tells the novelist, “You set up your stories logically,
like a chess game: here's the criminal, there's the victim, here's an
accomplice, there's a beneficiary; and all the detective needs to know
is the rules, he replays the moves of the game, and checkmate, the
criminal is caught and justice has triumphed. This fantasy drives me
crazy.”
How much is Dr. H., the retired inspector, driven insane?
Back in the Opel Kapitän after stopping along a country lane at a
ramshackle house with two gas pump out front where the chief obviously
knew the shabby old man pumping gas and the sixteen-year-old waitress
(by the writer's eye, she looked thirty), he informs the writer that
worn out oldster was once his most capable man. “God knows I knew
something about my profession, but Matthäi was a genius, and this to a
degree that puts all your paper detectives to shame.”
Whereupon
the chief launches into his story - the brutal murder of a
seven-year-old girl by the name of Gritli Moser at the edge of a forest
near the farming community of Mägendorf. And what a gripping tale it is;
I literally couldn't put the book down. As part of Dr. H.'s unfolding
drama, he relates something particularly heart-wrenching: Matthäi must
deliver the tragic news to Gritli's mother and father. Frau Moser makes
Matthäi promise and swear on his eternal salvation that he'll find the
murderer.
After relating his tale in full, at least as far as
Matthäi figures into it, the inspector turns philosophic and admits any
police investigation rarely takes into account a very real part of our
human, all too human life on this earth: the absurd.
I urge anyone keen on literature of the existential variety to read The Pledge
and reflect on what it means to be caught in the grip of absurdity, an
aburdity as ironclad as old Matthäi sitting on his bench back by the gas
pumps "clenching his fists, shaking them, and whispering, pressing the
words out in brief, forceful gasps, his face transfigured by an immense
faith: "I'll wait, I'll wait, he'll come, he'll come."
Echoes of Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot?
Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt, 1921-1990
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