Hansjörg Schneider

Hunkeler und der Fall Livius

«Wer keine Fehler macht, bewegt nichts. Nur Fehler sind produktiv. Korrektheit ist tödlich.»

Inspector Hunkeler is congenial with Glauser’s Inspector Studer. Hunkeler, too, is terribly stubborn and chooses unique paths in his solving of cases. His empathy and his obsession with stories dictate the direction of his investigations. Victims and perpetrators sometimes turn out to be very similar. In the Livius Case, the sixth story in the Hunkeler series, the author gives his hero a lot of liberties – and time to take in the snowy landscape between Basel and the Alsace. On New Year’s Eve a body is found in a garden plot on the Swiss-French border. Nobody really knew that person. Therefore, only gradually fragments of a dark past of war come to light, leading to Alsace, Emmenthal and East Prussia. Hunkeler leaves the clearing of details to his colleagues and intuitively follows other traces as well as gloomy thoughts. Every now and then his patience snaps when he has to listen to the dull conversations of the people inside the garden plots. Usually, though, Hunkeler meets his counterparts with due respect which brings forth unexpected information. The author builds up tension without the plot ever weighing down the atmospherically dense narration. Schneider, just like his protagonist Hunkeler, always keeps calm.

(Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)

Translation of title: Hunkeler and the Livius Case

Diogenes, Zürich 2007

ISBN: 978-3-257-24328-4