The Pledge
6. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Pledge (trans. Joel Agee)
This book, originally subtitled “Requiem for the Detective Novel,” is narrated by a former chief of police who is telling a mystery writer about a real-life crime he was once involved with. About ten years ago, a young girl was brutally murdered in the woods near a small Swiss village. The police chief’s best detective, Inspector Matthäi, was assigned to the case. At first, the outcome seemed simple: a peddler named von Gunten was seen in the area, and he had razor blades in his possession which could have been used to murder the girl. However, Matthäi eventually came to believe that von Gunten was innocent, and he had solemnly promised the dead girl’s mother that he would find the true killer. The rest of the police chief’s story tells of Matthäi’s attempts to catch the murderer and the ultimate outcome of his investigation.
This is another book I had to read for class, and once again it was an unusual take on the detective genre. Rather than focusing on the externals of the “whodunit,” it spends most of its time on the internal psychology of Matthäi. I like the fact that the story is told in multiple layers of narrative; it adds some interesting ambiguities to the ending of the novel. Although a solution to the crime is offered, the book leaves a little bit of a question in the reader’s mind. This would drive me crazy in an ordinary mystery novel, but in this case I think it makes the story even more compelling. The novel also raises some very interesting questions about the role of law in society, and also about the importance of storytelling to humanity. The overall tone of the book is bleak, but I still found it fascinating, and it definitely made me think.