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This latest offering from the excellent Bitter Lemon Press shows that while the likes of Christie and Sayers were dominating the Golden Age of Crime, there was equally strong writing going on elsewhere in Europe. Friedrich Glauser's books are often set in small villages with a picaresque supporting cast, but there any resemblance ends. His hero is the gruff and laconic Sgt Studer. Studer was once an inspector in Bern, but was demoted to a country sergeant after blotting his copybook with the powers that be. But he's the man called on to solve tricky crimes and appears to work in grand isolation. The latest mystery from Glauser, a drug addict who started writing crime novels whilst he was in a lunatic asylum, has the dogged Studer investigating the murder of James Farny – nicknamed The Chinaman by our hero. The chap, whom Studer had met briefly before his death, is found dead on a gravestone with a bullet through the heart – but the shot hasn't pierced his clothes. And to complicate matters for Studer, the grave is that of Anna Hungerlott, the wife of the poorhouse warden – and she too has been murdered. Studer's search takes him from a country pub to a horticultural college to the poorhouse, with occasional trips back to the city for one of his wife's excellent lunches. THE CHINAMAN is the fourth of this delightful series to be translated into English and is carried almost single-handed by our tenacious hero. He gets results by his sharp eye and by playing the country bumpkin. One minute he's talking rural Swiss, then just as suddenly disconcerts his interviewee by switching to formal high German. He's a man you underestimate at your peril. The books are snapshots of a community with the eccentric supporting cast, all described precisely by Glauser's razor-sharp prose. And the book feels so fresh that it could have been written yesterday, helped in no small measure by Mike Mitchell's bright and sparky translation.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, February 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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