Friedrich Dürrenmatt

The Quarry

«Die Freiheit ist der Mut zum Verbrechen, weil sie selbst ein Verbrechen ist.»

Friedrich Dürrenmatt liked to write crime novels that seem to follow the usual crime fiction plots only to turn into an absurd farce. This is what happens in «Der Verdacht»: terminally ill inspector Bärlach suspects Dr Emmenberger, head physician of the famous Sonnenstein Clinic in Zurich, is hiding a dark past. He believes Emmenberger worked as a doctor in a concentration camp under a false name during the Nazi period and carried out operations without anaesthetic. In order to substantiate these suspicions, Bärlach checks himself into Emmenberger’s clinic under a false name. At the clinic he is finally able to uncover the truth about the head physician. However, Emmenberger has seen through his plan and threatens to kill the inspector if he is not able to have as much faith in Emmenberger’s ability to heal him as he does in freedom and crime. It seems the inspector will be forced to remain silent when the Jew, Gulliver turns up as the deus ex machina come to free the inspector from his predicament…

In all of his crime novels, Dürrenmatt subjects his characters to chance, which always scuppers their plans, no matter how carefully they proceed. In «Der Verdacht», the perpetrator knows in advance that the inspector is going to set a trap for him by checking into his clinic under a false name.

(Rudolf Probst, transl. by Andrea Mason Willfratt) also in: F. Drürrenmatt, Novels. Picador Books 1985.

Translation of title: Der Verdacht

Jonathan Cape, London 1962

ISBN: 978-0330291125