Fever: A Sergeant Studer Mystery [Paperback]

Bitter Lemon Press is an London publishing company who specializes in fiction from authors of Africa, Europe and Latin America ."Our books are entertaining and gripping novels which expose the darker side of foreign places. They have a strong sense of place and explore what lies just beneath the surface of the bustling life of Mexico City, Paris or Munich." Fever was originally published in 1937, this is its first time published in English. It is considered a crime classic in Europe- one of the most prestigious awards for German mysteries award is named The Glauser for this reason. Fever is the third book in the Sergeant Struder novel series translated and published by Bitter Lemon. It is the third of the five in this Krimie series.

The Bern policeman, Sergeant Struder, has just become a grandfather. It is an occasion that brings him no joy, the combined feelings that he has lost his daughter for good and is getting old are melancholy ones. It is in this mood that he meets The White Father, a priest who has a tale that foretells the death of two elderly sisters, cities apart. It is the beginning of a mystery that will take him from Paris to Switzerland to North Africa. As pieces of the crime come together through a family history that spans the years, Struder must follow its puzzle to the end. His dreams of youth are embodied in the girl Marie who appears and disappears at every juncture. He follows the tale to the Foreign Legion, again a dream from his youth.

In writing style, the book is almost two different tomes in one. The first half concentrates on getting the parts of the mystery together, each piece finding its place in the crime riddle. But as the story moves to the Foreign Legion it becomes more surreal, more other worldly. A scene where Struder watches a gazelle and dog play together in a room is extraordinary. The writing becomes more colorful, vivid and engaging.

"The sea was filthy and the waves were like fat old women with not quite clean hair- the scarves fluttered in the air as the women rolled laboriously on."
""In the sky was an improbably white moon, which was vainly trying to wipe away the clouds that kept floating past its flat nose."

It is there that Struder solves what he had hoped would be his "Big Case," the one that would regain him his status within the Bern police depatrment. But people and the case are not what they may seem.

Friedrich Glauser (1896-1938) was a Swiss writer. Due to schizophrenia and depression and an addiction to morphine and opium he was confined to various psychiatric wards, asylums and prison. It was at the Swiss insane asylum Waldau that he wrote his novels. He was released in 1938 with plans to marry his nurse, Berthe Bendel. He collapsed and died at the dinner the night before their wedding on December 6, 1938.

The translation is also noteworthy. It was a very tricky task to be able to translate the subtleties of the Swiss German with its formal and informal forms of address. The du versus the Sie can alter the nuances of a scene but there are no separate words in English. Mike Mitchell has done an admirable job of coping with both an earlier, stylized form of writing and the use of German, Swiss German and French within the book.

Coming out September 2006- put it on your wish list now!

I very much enjoy Glauser's economical style. And I liked this book very much but I was slightly dissatisfied with the ending. I thought there might be more about what Studer would do after cracking the "big case".

Euphoric to learn he is a grandfather, Police Sergeant Jacob Studer knows anyone can see the obvious connection between the deaths of the two elderly women in different Swiss cities though the local cops assume it is an accident anyway. Both died from gas leaks in their respective homes in Bern and Basel, but the prime link is each of them had been married to the same man.

Though only a visitor, Studer accompanies his friend Police Commissaire Madelin to Basel where he helps in the investigation in which clues and suspects vanish rather easily as if someone with power is manipulating the inquiry. Studer focuses on Father Matthias, brother of the victims' late husband, as his prime suspect, but also does not rule out other family members whose motive might be some passion filled vengeance, but who remains just out of reach.

This is an English translation of a classic 1936 police procedural first printed in Germany. The cast makes the tale as they are eccentric in many ways driving the free drinking some might say alcoholic Studer to distraction. However, unable to let go, the obsessed cop follows clues that seem to vanish in a nano second to wherever it takes him including North Africa. Readers of off beat convoluted illogical whodunits will want to read the fascinating Studer cases (see IN MATTO'S REALM) in which the protagonist makes for an interesting different type of mystery.

Harriet Klausner