The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion

by Friedrich Durrenmatt

Joel Agee (Translator) and Sven Birkerts (Foreword)

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This volume offers bracing new translations of two precursors to the modern detective novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, whose genre-bending mysteries recall the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet and anticipate the postmodern fictions of Paul Auster and other contemporary neo-noir novelists. Both mysteries follow Inspector Barlach as he moves through worlds in which the distinction between crime and justice seems to have vanished. In The Judge and His Hangman, Barlach forgoes the arrest of a murderer in order to manipulate him into killing another, more elusive criminal. And in Suspicion, Barlach pursues a former Nazi doctor by checking into his clinic with the hope of forcing him to reveal himself. The result is two thrillers that bring existential philosophy and the detective genre into dazzling convergence. 

  • ISBN10 0226174441
  • ISBN13 9780226174440
  • Publish Date 1 November 2006
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint University of Chicago Press