From Publishers Weekly
Originally published in 1937, the fifth and final Det. Sgt. Jakob Studer mystery (after The Chinaman) offers just enough eccentricity to support the author's reputation as the Swiss Simenon. The Bern policeman and his wife are on holiday in the town of Schwarzenstein, where their daughter is getting married, when a man, Jean Stieger, is found dead in the Hôtel zum Hirschen, stabbed with a sharpened bicycle spoke. The local police take the obvious suspect, bicycle mechanic Ernst Graf, into custody. Studer, however, isn't convinced they have their man. Then Stieger's financier boss is poisoned to death. As Studer investigates, using his own peculiar method of ratiocination, he discovers any number of suspects in what is essentially a variant on the classic locked-room murder puzzle. If the forensic methods the detective employs appear quaint to the contemporary reader, that's half the fun. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In Sergeant Studer’s droll fifth outing, which served as the series’ swan song and sees its first English translation here, the Swiss police detective takes his matter-of-fact mastery of human nature and logical deduction to curmudgeonly new heights. When the waitress at the country inn where his daughter has just been married—and where a man murdered via sharpened bicycle spoke has lately turned up—brings pre-filled drinks to the table rather than pouring them in his sight, the suspicious Studer surreptitiously swaps his glass with a tablemate and then counts his blessings when the man keels over, poisoned. Probably had it coming, the sergeant surmises, and Studer’s ardent followers won’t doubt him for more than a few seconds. As the mystery plays out like a Thin Man romp full of frame jobs and double crosses, one might be excused for wishing Glauser had set Studer on his usual darker path, but then even a hard-driving, Brissago-chomping detective deserves a break once in a while. --Frank Sennett
