A review by naimfrewat
The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

5.0

I've never read anything like Suspicion. To call it a crime novel is limiting. It uses the crime novel as a stepping stone to a sort of a philosophical essay. The inspector recedes to let the killers' thoughts through. In this exclusive hospital where Barlach is led, with its glaring lights and mirrored ceilings, a bleak and dreary ambience is painted through the monologues of the killers, the depth and morbidity of which, I've never read before, yet in such conciseness that got me highlighting whole paragraphs. What surprised me throughout the book were the details of the murders at the concentration camps. I thought people at the time were unaware of went in there (at least, that's what previously read essays claim). It obviously is not correct and so the novel helps reinforce the hypothesis that people knew but turned the blind eye.