Quote:
Originally Posted by beachwanderer
I tend to agree. 
If one wants to take another perspective on european crime writing in the 1930s:
Friedrich Glauser (1896 to 1938) wrote some neat stories about "Wachtmeister Studer", a fictional swiss policeman from Bern. The german texts are out of copyright and have been added to the Patricia Clark Memorial Library here on MR by mtravellerh.
As far as I can see there are ebooks of english translations of "Wachtmeister Studer" ("Thumbprint") and "Der Chinese" ("The Chinaman") over at amazon.
Mind you, I don't know if they "work" as translations, as the originals derive some of their feel by occasional use of the local language. But the way Glauser develops his stories and characters should work alright. |
I just finished the English translation of "Thumbprint" - and the style was certainly very reminiscent of Georges Simenon's Maigret (some sources describe Glauser as "the Swiss Maigret") - very simple prose, a detective who pays attention to people's behavior and expects them to lie and not cooperate with the police, depicting the police force largely tangled in bureaucracy & politics, a thinking/contemplative detective, etc. In particular, the plot has Studer staying in a small village, trying to decode and understand the long-standing loyalties, feuds, politics, etc. - which is the setting for many Maigret novels: big city policeman versus small town protectiveness and inwardness - while trying to solve a murder.
The translation is a bit rough in places. Sauerkraut & pig's knuckles was translated as "bacon joint". The shifts between local language and formal language is explicitly described, for example, "he resumed his official German diction" or "he began speaking as a peasant would" or "he now sounded like a French nobleman" - the translator chose to identify the verbal shifts rather than try to reproduce them.
Overall, very readable in translation, especially for fans of Maigret. The big downside for the Amazon version - it's Topaz, with some weird formatting, but overall a fairly clean text. The chapter titles didn't render well at all, but the text contained few problems.