READING SWISS NOVELS – The promise, crime novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was born in Konolfingen, and his family moved to Bern in 1935. He began studies in philosophy (German language and literature), at the University of Zurich, In 1943, he decided to become an author and dramatist, and dropped his academic career. His technique, was influenced by Bertolt Brecht, as in the use of parables and of actors, who step out of their roles to act as narrators. His plays, often have bizarre settings. His first play “It Is Written”, is about the Anabaptist suppression in Münster in 1534–36. His first major success was the play Romulus the Great. Set in the year A.D. 476, the play explores the last days of the Roman Empire, presided over, and brought about by its last emperor, Romulus.

Reading the novel The Promise, you know the Matthäi commissioner, a cop who has obtuse colleagues who refuse to give credence to his intuitions. A gruesome murder (a seven year old girl who was brutally killed), leads him to think that it is a crime of a sexual nature. Facing the pain of the victim’s parents, he agrees to find the murderess. As it takes action in finding the criminal, the commissioner can not find anything: only clues and fragments of a truth. He leaves his post at the police, he convinced that to capture the murderess has waiting for him, direct him to another crime. He adopts a child, using it as bait, waiting manic appearance, as his only reason for living. That waiting takes him where he did not imagine to arrive. https://www.amazon.com/Pledge-Friedrich-D%C3%BCrrenmatt/dp/0226174379#reader_0226174379