Notes made when reading The Judge and His Hangman

 

The Judge and His Hangman by Friedrich Durrenmatt is 934^th on The Greatest Books of All Time, while his The Pledge is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read

 

Link to The Pledge

On the morning of November 3^rd, Alphonse Clenin, constable of the village of Twann, came upon a blue Mercedes car by the roadside, just where the highway from Lamlingen emerges from the woods that surround the gorges of the Twann River

He thought the man in the car might be drunk, so he prepared to take him for a breakfast of black coffee and porridge

But then saw the man was dead, a bullet had passed though one temple and out of the other

 

The dead man was Ulrich Schmied, a lieutenant in the Berne police

As a village constable, he had never encountered a case of such gravity

 

This sounds crazy, but after a few minutes, he returns to the car, pushes the body into the passenger seat and then takes the wheel!! No fuel, but it is on a steep incline, so he coasts the car and stopps at The Bear; filled the tank, then drove to the town of Biel…

Inspector Barlach took charge of the investigation, he was the dead man’s superior – distinguished career in the detection of crime, first in Constantinople, then in charge of the criminal investigation department  Frankfurt, in the early Nazi days

But he approves of the moving of the body and all!! Didn’t even look at the body, Chanz would and then see Schmied was wearing evening dress tails

He only has one year left, if they operate now, but he would not let them

 

He slapped the face of a high German official and thus he returned to his birthplace

First action – to keep the death secret –

 

Nothing more superfluous than newspapers has been invented in the last two thousand years – says the inspector

Dr Lucius Lutz, the insector’s chief disagrees with the secrecy

The dead man had lodged with the Schonlers

 

Bzrlach wants Chanz as assistant Malamud link

Tells him he met thousnads of policemen, between Constantinople and Frankfurt, but none compared with Schmied, who had brains  - by comparison, most of us looked pretty small fry – knew Greek and Latin, he was an educated man

 

Since Schmied wore evening dress, he must have been going to a party, ergo they wait on the road, to see a group of people and bingo, limousines pass and they follow

G in notebook and on the gate Gastmann Chanz did his homework dog massive on top of the inspector and his subordinate kills him

Reception in honour of a world famous pianist

 

Von Schwendi Colonel, lawyer and member of the National Council came to the gate

Gastmann very rich, ‘philosophe’, meaning he thinks much but does nothing’

Schmied went to the parties under false name Dr Prantl, lecturer in American Cultural History at University of Munich

 

Men who are the backbone of Swiss society went to the parties – business

But also staff of a foreign embassy, who do not want their names to be associated with the second list, in public – negotiations for new trade agreement like stupid Kuchner

Masquerade as someone else the dead man

 

This man is in the house reading the papers of dead Schmied, when inspector retunrs from the funeral. He calls himself…Gatsmann now

Barlach met him 40 years ago in Istanbul

 

The inspector must have an operation, even so, he would die in one year

At night, an intruder comes into his house