Self's Punishment [Paperback]

Bernhard Schlink (Author), Walter Popp (Author), Rebecca Morrison (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 12, 2005

As a young man, Gerhard Self served as a Nazi prosecutor. After the war he was barred from the judicial system and so became a private investigator. He has never, however, forgotten his complicity in evil.

Hired by a childhood friend, the aging Self searches for a prankish hacker who’s invaded the computer system of a Rhineland chemical plant. But his investigation leads to murder, and from there to the charnel house of Germany’s past, where the secrets of powerful corporations lie among the bones of numberless dead. What ensues is a taut, psychologically complex, and densely atmospheric moral thriller featuring a shrewd, self-mocking protagonist.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The successful film adaptation of Schlink's The Reader should give a boost to his third mystery to feature aging German PI Gerhard Self (after 2007's Self's Deception). On his way home to Mannheim during a snow storm, Schlink helps a stranded driver, Bertram Welker, who on learning Self's profession offers him a job. A partner in the region's oldest private bank, Welker is writing its history and asks Self to identify a silent partner in the bank. What appears to be a straightforward assignment becomes a double murder inquiry once Self comes to doubt Welker's account of how his wife perished in a hiking accident the year before and the bank's unofficial archivist dies in a suspicious car crash after handing Self a briefcase full of money. Crisp prose and some well-handled plot complications, which include the emergence of a man claiming to be Self's son, will keep readers turning the pages. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* This stellar series debut presents former Nazi prosecutor turned private investigator Gerhard Self in an unsettlingly matter-of-fact style. Instead of the brooding and tortured soul readers might expect--or even demand--Gerd (as his many friends call him) comes across as wry and likable as he hustles up cases, flirts with attractive women of all ages, and worries about slipping into old age with only his cat for company. It's the early 1980s, and Self has been hired by a boyhood friend to smoke out a hacker who's playing havoc with the computers at Rhineland Chemical Works. But after Self springs a trap that gets the troublemaker murdered, he gradually faces the guilt he still carries for his youthful embrace of National Socialism. His simple refusal to let himself off the hook and step back into his old public prosecutor's role after the war doesn't seem like penance enough anymore. "I had planned to live at peace with my past," he muses. "Guilt, atonement, enthusiasm and blindness, pride and anger, morality and resignation--I'd brought it all together in an elaborate balance. The past had achieved abstraction." But Self's unwitting participation in the new crime drives him to pursue the path of justice wherever it may lead. A fascinating exploration of how people often manage to carve out normal lives even after being complicit in terrible acts. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (April 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037570907X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375709074
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,185,870 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More Self mysteries! More!, May 18, 2006

By 

Nina (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Self's Punishment (Paperback)

When I first bought this book (under pressure in an airport), I feared it might be rather dry. But a chapter into it, like the previous reviewer, I didn't want the book to end. The mystery itself was pretty routine, which is why I gave the book only four stars, but I loved it for other reasons. It's sparse and unsentimental, and has little description or dialogue, yet somehow I developed a good sense of the characters, and great deal of feeling for some of them. Second, it reveals the side of German culture often overshadowed by Nazi Era images - love of cars, wines, food, music, technology, philosophy - simply by the everyday way in which these things are named or discussed. The people in the book are rather formal and isolated, some are a bit revolting, some are likeable, most are slightly idiosynchratic, and all seem very like people one has met or could meet anywhere. I wanted to keep reading about Self, the cat Turbo, the friend who built edifices with matchsticks while his wife read him stories, and in the closing scene, to be on the balcony on New Year's Eve clinking glasses with Self and his friends. Whether you liked The Reader or not, this book will make you marvel at what a great writer can do with a good character and few words.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Self's Punishment, November 30, 2004

By 

John A. Landers (Sydney Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Self's Punishment (Paperback)

This book is a great read. The characters are very full and human. No pale characters here. These are comlpex full-blooded ex-Nazi sexual warm yet lonely human beings.

A most enjoyable hard to put down novel which I wanted to read and not have finish. I wished it could have been three or four times longer.

Vintage Schlink.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars super German private investigator mystery, August 15, 2009

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Self's Murder (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (Paperback)

After his last major case (see SELF'S DECEPTION), German private investigator Gerhard Self is thinking he is too old for this type of work. As he drives home to Manheim with his girlfriend Brigette during a nasty snow storm, Self notices a car in the ditch and stops to assist a stranded driver, banker Bertram Welker.

Upon learning that Self is a sleuth, Welker hires the investigator to uncover the identity of a silent bank partner as he is writing the history of the establishment that he co-owns. Self accepts the easy assignment, which pays extraordinarily well. However the detective has self doubts about his client when the bank's archivist mysteriously dies in a car crash just after giving the sleuth an attaché case loaded with money. He digs a bit into his client's past to learn he became a widower last year when his wife died a hiking accident. Two deadly accidents are two to many so Self investigates Welker.

This is a super German private investigator mystery with several super twists that will leave readers and the weary hero guessing as nothing is quite like it first seems including a stranger claiming to be the son of Self. The story line is fast-paced but totally owned by the sleuth as his inquiry into the silent partner leads him to inquire about his client. Fans will enjoy the translation of Bernhard Shlink's entertaining German mystery and seek the previous two thrillers (see SELF'S PUNISHMENT).

Harriet Klausner