A review by fearandtrembling
The Execution of Justice by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

4.0

This is my first time reading anything by Dürrenmatt, a Swiss playwright and writer. I would say this book is the anti-crime novel. Although steeped in the ambience of noir, it's a philosophical and existential, thus absurdist, exploration of justice and human morality. I found it both fascinating and confounding and couldn't quite put it down. It's narrated by a down on his luck alcoholic lawyer tasked with "proving" the innocence of a guilty man. As such, the narrative swerves and turns and provides none of the chronological coherence and tidiness of plot that you would find in a more traditional whodunit. The author apparently started this in the 1950s and finished it in the 80s. There is a lot of criticism of Swiss society and its contradictions packed into the thirty years it took to complete this book. But much of it is a recognition of a universal malaise, distilled into sharp satire.

(TW for some typically macho/toxically masculine views on rape and ableism.)