Wachtmeister Studer

I couldn't find a good picture of "Constable Studer" in the public domain, but I needed a detective, so I settled for the more recognizable Sherlock Holmes instead. I managed to finish one of those books I was recently "actively not reading": Friedrich Glauser's Wachtmeister Studer.

Studer is a classic Swiss-German detective novel, a book that (like The Radetzky March) has been on my to-read list for quite a while. Glauser himself was a rather down-and-out character, and his detective creation, Constable Studer, is similarly more at home among the hard-luck, on-the-fringe types who drift in and out of prison than among the upper crust of society.

There appears to be an English translation of the novel under the title Thumbprint (what would have been wrong with "Constable Studer"?), so you could check it out if you like.

And if you are up for some Swiss German (mostly beyond my ability to follow, I'm afraid), there is even a film version on YouTube:

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