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A FONDNESS FOR TRUTH is the third entry in Kim Hays' Polizei Bern series and the first I've read. The leading characters, detectives Giuliana Linder and Renzo Donatelli, are both married, though not to each other, although an occasional spark of attraction does arise. In their own way, they each represent certain of the changes that Switzerland is experiencing in the 21st century, Giuliana a woman in an untraditional job, Renzo as a son of Italian immigrants. The major case they will deal with will be coloured by other recent changes in the Swiss social scene.
The book is set in Bern, the fifth largest city in Switzerland and located in a Swiss-German-speaking area. As it opens, Andi Eberhart is pedalling home from curling practice through the rain. Distracted by the hostility of one of the members of the team she skips for and anxious to get home to her wife and their baby, she fails to notice a car following her. It suddenly speeds up and drives right into her and sends her flying. When she hits the ground she dies.
Andi is married to Nisha Pragasam, a Tamil woman, daughter of a Sri Lankan family that had sought refuge in Switzerland during its civil war. Nisha has grown up in Bern, is fully fluent in the local language, but her way of life is not fully accepted by her family. Her father has forbidden her to visit the family home and a brother has been texting her with abusive messages though another brother is supportive and her mother secretly comforting. The two detectives must consider members of the family as possible suspects. Then there is the woman on Andi's curling team who thought she, not Andi, should be skipping for the team. Is a perfect stranger also possible, one infuriated by the spectacle of two women married to each other, a stranger appalled by the legalization in Switzerland of same sex marriage only two years ago?
This is not the sort of mystery in which the reader is challenged to figure out who-dunnit before the private detective can reveal the culprit in the last chapter. Instead we follow the case along, watching the facts unfold, observing the domestic relationships of the various characters, and learning quite a bit about modern Switzerland without any full-on lecturing.
In an article in the October 2021Crime Review, Paul French addressed the question of crime fiction and Switzerland. Most of the works he cites were not written by Swiss. I gather that French was confining his remarks to works available in English and few Swiss mysteries had been translated. Had he waited a year he could have included Hays' first in this series, PESTICIDE, a book almost unique in that it was written by an American who has lived close to forty years in Switzerland. No translation necessary and Hays writes extremely well indeed. She is not starry-eyed about her country, but is able to communicate the strains that the modern world imposes on a relatively quiet conservative land. It is a treat to read a book written in the author's first language but set in a country that has become the author's home.
Hays is also a sensitive and perceptive observer of familial relationships to a degree quite rare in genre fiction. Generally speaking, close attention to detectives' families is not often paid in a crime series, except to the degree that they create difficulties for the detective who is caught between their demands and his or her commitment to the job. Families show up more consistently in cozies, but here their appearance more often acts as comic relief. Hays takes a strong interest in family matters independent of the demands of police service and approaches them with the concern of a serious novelist. As a result, her detectives appear more fully rounded and worthy of our attention than they otherwise might.
I plan to go back to read the first two in the series. You might feel the same if you read A FONDNESS FOR THE TRUTH, which I hope you will.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, April 2024
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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