Book Review: The Pledge by Friederick Durrenmatt
on Sheila Ash (India), 23/Jun/2020 02:28, 34 days ago
The PledgebyFriedrich DürrenmattMy rating:3 of 5 starsI don't often respoond to adverts that pop up but I recently saw one forPuskin Press's Vertigo imprintwhich struck a chord. On checking it out I find it started in Fall 2015 to "publish crime classics from around the world, focussing ontour-de-forceworks written between 1920s and 1970s by international masters of the genre" This book was my first dip into that series.Friederick Durrenmatt(1921 - 1990) was a Swiss playwriter and novelist. He was instrumental in the post WW2 revival of German theatre. He wrote detective novels. According to the notes in the book "he is famed for his philosophical crime thrillers, which draw comparisons to the works of Paul Auster and Umberto Eco for their post-modern questioning of the conventions of the genre" This one I noted had been made into amoviedirected by Sean Penn and starring Jack Nicholson (with that combination how come I missed it?)But is The Pledge a detective novel? Yes and No. Yes, there is a murder, and yes there is a detective. It is constructed as a story within a short framing story. The narrator has been giving a talk on the art of writing detective novel which hasn't really gone that well, when he meets Dr H the former Chief of Police in the canton of Zurich, who offered to drive him back to Zurich. On that journey they stop at a run down gas station. There an old man sits on a bench, unkempt and smelling of absinthe while inside an old looking 16 year old serves the two men coffee. Dr H clearly knows them, he calls the girl by her name, Annemarie, an departs saying "Next time" to the old guy outside whose response is "I'll wait, I'll wait, he'll come, he'll come". Thus the story is set up for its telling by Dr H, as we readers are left wondering why Dr H made a point of stopping at this gas station.The body of a very young girl, brutally stab, had been found in the forest by a travelling peddler, von Gunten. The peddler phones his detective acquaintance Mathai (at that time Dr H's first lieutenant) , because he is afraid he will be blamed as he has a previous conviction for relations with a 14 yr old minor. Matthai upon meeting the parents of the dead girl makes a pledge to find her murderer on his "eternal salvation". It is this pledge of the book's title that provides the core theme of the book. How far do you go to keep a promise? What rules do you break to do so?Durrenmatt's detective novels are said to "reflect the absurdity of real life rather than proceeding liek mathematical equations with a definite solution" He disliked the logical playing out of the genre. The subtitle of The Pledge is "Requiem for the Detective Novel" . ***SPOILER ALERT *** Whilst the ending told by Dr H, provides a 'solution' to the murder, it comes from left field. Many readers will find this unsatisfactory. But it is meant to be an 'absurd' solution, and provides a comic, tragic story in and of itself.The real skill in the book is how the author draws the spiralling disintegration of Mathai as he decays alons with his obsession to fulfill his promise. The 'absurb' solution is insult to injury both for the detective, and for the reader. The end is actually more disturbing than the unsolved crime would have been.The tale and the framing story itself embody a critique about the predictability of the detective genre. Most definitely a genre busting thriller. I could not stop reading it. A great first dip into the Vertigo imprint. More will follow.View all my reviewsashramblings