This is the first novel I've read by Auguste Groner, and I was happily surprised.
Groner was a turn of the century (19/20th) Austrian writer who produced several novels featuring the detective Joseph Muller. In "The Case of the Lamp that Went Out," a man is discovered shot dead by the roadside in a quiet suburb of Vienna. Muller is involved early on and his methodical efforts lead to the solution of the murder. Groner was a socially-minded former teacher, and what makes her detective appealingly different is his humanity. Muller, like Sherlock Holmes, is a brilliant observer and thinker, but whereas Holmes tends to treat the people involved in his cases objectively--as he would other elements pertaining to the solution of the mystery, Muller shows empathy and an understanding of the complexities of human character. He has been compared in that regard to Chesterton's Father Brown.
This approach is evident in "The Case of the Lamp that Went Out." Its outcome is more complex than the murderer-caught-and-justice-served resolution one usually expects of the genre. The writing is clean and (unlike some novels of the period) the plot is focused and uncluttered by tangent observations--surprisingly so since Groner is also writing to make a point on the need for a sympathetic understanding of the complexities of human nature even in the pursuit of criminal justice. Yet she avoids unnecessary preachiness, letting the tale make the point.
It's a short novel and quickly read. Note: Before the first chapter there's a rather lengthy description of Joseph Muller. It's unnecessary and not typical of the rest of the novel, and for all I know it may be a preface added by the translator.
A remark about the rendering of the Kindle edition: the lines have hard returns. I had to read with my Kindle sideways to avoid weird line breaks,
