Mystery-Plus

THE PLEDGE (183 pp.)--Friedrich Duerrenmatt--Knopf ($3).

This novel has most of the elements of a fine murder mystery, but is written far better than most and leaves the reader with a wry, ironic aftertaste. Swiss Author Duerrenmatt showed Broadway, in The Visit, how an existentialist allegory of human greed and corruption can be made into exciting theater, especially if Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne are on hand (TIME, May 19). The Pledge uses a grisly crime to show how a man's stubborn faith can be defeated by a combination of senseless accident and faithlessness on the part of his fellows.

When Gritli Moser, a little Swiss girl, is slashed to death in the woods near her native village, all the clues point to Gunten, a peddler with an unsavory reputation. When, under third degree, he confesses to the murder and then commits suicide in his cell, the local chief of police and everyone else consider the case closed--all except Inspector Matthaei, who is sure the murderer is still at large. A childish school drawing made by Gritli before her death gives him the clue he needs, and he goes to work--alone, since the other cops will not help. When he is dropped from the force, Matthaei opens a gas station and hires a former streetwalker with a young daughter as housekeeper; he hopes that the child's presence will lure the murderer. Matthaei's stubborn faith leads to a long wait, during which he turns to liquor, degenerates both physically and mentally. The murderer does not appear. And yet the question of whether or not Matthaei was right, after all, keeps the reader in suspense to the end.

Author Duerrenmatt turns his plot so neatly that he cannot help licking his chops over it. His final ironic twist is both fiendish and plausible, but he leads up to it in a sententious, preachy chapter. And the carefully spelled-out fact that selflessness and faith were the road to Matthaei's breakdown creates an atmosphere of intense depression. But none of these shortcomings can really harm an unconventional and psychologically ingenious mystery story.

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