This is by Friedrich Glauser (1896-1938). It was originally published in 1936, and the action takes place a little earlier, in 1932.

An English translation, by Mike Mitchell, appeared in 2004, under the title Thumbprint. But it's fun to read the German version, as the story is set in a Swiss village, and you learn all sorts of little Swisseties on your way through.

I first heard about Glauser when I was reading up on The Chinese Carnation. He had the most extraordinary life. Born in Vienna, his Austrian mother died when he was just four. His father was Swiss, and in 1910, he entered a "Rural Educational Home" in Glarisegg, Switzerland. Just three years later he made his first attempt at suicide (there would be more). And the melodrama goes on: A rift with his father; multiple bouts of psychiatric treatment in hospitals and asylums; morphine and heroin addiction; a couple of jail spells for petty crimes such as forging prescriptions; a stint in the French Foreign Legion; several recurrences of malaria; and various moves between Switzerland and France and Italy. He died in Italy, aged only 42, just before he was due to be married.


Friedrich Glauser, 1931

It's extraordinary that such a troubled person could come up with any literary output whatsoever. But he left us five Sergeant Studer novels (this is the first, written while he was in Waldau asylum), plus a couple of other works. And they're rated. In fact, Germany's most prestigious award for crime fiction is named after him...

I really liked this book. Our lead is a low-key investigator, the eponymous Studer (some contretemps in the past has kept him in a rank that's comparatively low for his age). He has a defiantly steely streak, but he's kind, and he's persistent in his pursuit of justice. If something feels off to him, he won't rest until he has fathomed it out, regardless of the easy ways out he may be offered en route.

So, when a man is found murdered just outside the Swiss village of Gerzenstein, the chief suspect has to be Erwin Schlumpf, who already has a criminal record, and was seen shortly afterwards in possession of more money than he could reasonably be supposed to have come by honestly. Compounding the guilty look is Schlumpf's attempt to commit suicide as soon as he's put in a jail cell.

But for Studer, this story is all too simple. So he starts to burrow, treading on a few toes as he does so.


Another bit of Switzerland, 2023

It's brilliantly done. There's a bit of melodrama at the end, but otherwise, it's a case of putting the clues together piece by piece in an atmosphere that's always a little menacing. Gerzenstein is a strange place. Every house has a signboard. Butcher, baker, grocer... And every house pumps out music: "'Gerzenstein, the village of shops and loudspeakers,' murmured Studer, and it seemed to him as if he'd characterized part of the village's atmosphere in those words." What kind of village is this anyway, he wonders, perhaps signalling changing times: "Where were the farmers in this village? You didn't see anything of them. They must live behind the shopfronts, somewhere in the background."

Someone once told Studer that it's better to have 10 murder cases in the city than one in the country. In rural villages, people stick together, and everyone has something to hide. Which turns out to be true in this case. We have people telling half-truths, and covering up what they've seen, and who they've been with, or owe money to, or are being blackmailed by. There are rumours of insurance fraud rumbling away in the background, and seediness, corruption, and threat lurk just under the surface.

The Witschi family are fascinating. It's Wendelin, the father, who is found dead. (Was he murdered? Or did he commit suicide?) "Greetings, enter, and bring good fortune" stands written over the Witschis' door, and their house is called Alpine Rest... They were doing well, financially, until the bank crash. And they were happy. But then they lost everything, and they've never got things back together again. "Uncle Aeschbacher" -- who is actually a relative, and also the village head -- has stumped up money a couple of times to bail them out. But these days Wendelin is away a lot on his travelling salesman rounds, and has taken to the bottle; his wife, Anastasia, when not buried in her novels, seems to be plotting with their son, Armin; and daughter Sonja (Schumpf's girlfriend) seems ill at ease and nervous.

Aeschbacher is another good character. A Big Man. A swaggerer. Never slow to come forward with a bit of intimidation. But clever at reading people's minds, especially Studer's. At one point, the policeman tells him: "You like playing, Aeschbacher. You play with people, play on the stock exchange, play with politics..." But Aeschbacher has one weak point: His wife, whom he really loves.

There are some wonderfully surreal scenes -- for example, the one when all the guests in the pub suddenly sound as though they're people on the wireless. "Where had people left their voices?" wonders Studer. "Had they been poisoned by the radio? Had the Gerzenstein loudspeakers caused a new epidemic? Voice change?" Everyone suddenly goes silent. And then the group begins to move again, in slightly ghostly fashion. Cinematic.

Studer, unsurprisingly, given his creator's experience, has considerable psychological insight. He recalls hearing from a doctor in Lyon: "It would be a mistake to believe that there are normal human beings. All human beings are at least half-mad, and this fact should not be forgotten in any investigation." And he realizes, too, that sometimes we do precisely what we want to avoid, and what our mind warns us against. It's as though the subconscious has a will of its own. It's also obvious that our detective has more of a rapport with the people on the edge of Gerzenstein society than those who sit respectably at its core (by the same token, the ex-cons employed by the local horticultural business are way more helpful than the supposedly upright villagers).



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Miscellanea:

-- There are some funny little swipes at Switzerland. When an insurance fraud is being discussed, the investigating judge says dismissively: "In Austria, yes. But we're in Switzerland!"

-- There's something very engaging about Studer. As Mike Mitchell, who translated the series into English, says: "There is a profound sense of humanity permeating Glauser’s writing, which at the same time throws a keen light on social conditions in Switzerland in the 1930s, but coming across as a concern for individuals rather than as a political message."

-- On the author's status, he comments that Glauser is regarded as a serious writer. He's not seen as "just" a crime writer, but holds an important place in 20th-century Swiss literature. The "Swissness" of the novels is important, Mitchell argues, and has meant that Sergeant Studer is a familiar figure in German-speaking Switzerland, not just through the books, but through films and television as well. When Glauser’s crime novels first appeared in serial form in Swiss newspapers, they were very successful, and two were published as books during his short lifetime. The other three were published later, but by publishing-houses that were relatively not that well known. It was not until after WWII that his reputation spread in the wider German-speaking world. This publishing history probably accounts for the lack of attention by English publishers before the war. "Also," Mitchell observes, "Glauser’s style of crime writing is not in tune with the English tradition: the country-house mystery, the amateur, often upper-class, 'sleuth', Agatha Christie’s almost abstract 'locked-room' type puzzles, and a 'Swiss Simenon' lacks the attraction of Paris."

-- There are a few little meta-elements along the way. Studer, for example, decries the propensity of young men to read (and act out) the novels featuring John Kling (he was the hero of a series of books that were popular from the twenties right through to the mid-fifties, and then formed the basis of a German TV series starting in the late sixties). There's also an amused little reference to Sherlock Holmes, when our detective says, self-deprecatingly, that if things go on like this, he'll soon be crawling around on the floor with a magnifying glass in his hand, scouring the carpet...



-- Author Patrick Lennon comments: "I know the 'dark underside of the small town' concept is a well-used one..., but in Glauser’s hands it takes on an unusual energy. In terms of atmosphere, there is something about the narrow streets and the houses with 'Welcome, Guest' in Gothic script over the door, coupled with the gloomy interiors of prison cells and magistrates' offices, which evoke Glauser's near-contemporary, Franz Kafka. And in the maze of unhealthy relationships and fraudulent trade-offs which have led to Witschi’s death, there is something of Kafka’s solitary man falling into the grip of the machine." Another interesting thought...

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Full marks for Herr Glauser from me, then. And having bought the bargain-priced e-compendium a while ago, I still have some more in the bag.