Overview

When two women are accidently killed by gas leaks, Sergeant Studer investigates the thinly disguised double murder in Bern and Basel. The trail leads to a geologist dead from a tropical fever in a Moroccan Foreign Legion post and a murky oil deal involving rapacious politicians and their henchmen. With the help of a hashish-induced dream and the common sense of his stay-at-home wife, Studer solves the multiple riddles on offer. But assigning guilt remains an elusive affair. Fever , a European crime classic, was first published in 1936. It has been translated into four languages. This is its first publication in English and the third in the Sergeant Studer series published by Bitter Lemon Press.

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Thumbprint is a fine example of the craft of detective writing in a period which fans will regard as the golden age of crime fiction. The Sunday Telegraph Makes Mankell look skittish. Thumbprint is a genuine curiosity that compares to the dank poetry of Simenon and reveals the enormous debt owed by Durenmatt, Switzerland's most famous crime writer, for whom this should be seen as a template. The Guardian. In Matto's Realm features the dour Sergeant Studer, a Swiss Maigret albeit with a strong sense of the absurd. The way in which life in the sinister walls mirrors the chaos outside underlies a despairing plot about the reality of madness and life, leavened at regular intervals with strong doses of bittersweet irony. The idiosyncratic investigation and its laconic detective have not aged one iota. Who said the past never changes. The Guardian Glauser was among the best European crime writers of the inter-war years. In Matto's Realm is a dark mystery set in a lunatic asylum follows a labyrinthine plot where the edges between reality and fantasy are blurred. The detail, place and sinister characters are so intelligently sculpted that the sense of foreboding is palpable. Glasgow Herald

Obsessive Police Sergeant Studer investigates a pair of strange murders in a strange land.A pleasant meal at a Parisian bistro turns positively giddy for the imposing Studer, a German-born former Detective Inspector working his way back up the ranks since being busted after a scandal (In Matto's Realm, Jan. 2006, etc.). The liberal drinking is interrupted by an exciting telegram telling him that he's become a grandfather for the first time. When his host, Commissaire Madelin, asks Studer to accompany him to Basel on minor police business, the incurably curious Studer accepts. They're joined by Father Matthias, a silky-voiced cleric who weaves a baroque tale of a clairvoyant colonel and a pair of women Matthias thinks are in danger. Indeed, two elderly women are found dead in their flats, both gassed, one in Bern and one in Basel. Local police are inclined to rule both deaths accidental, but not Studer, whose iconoclastic and sometimes paranoid probe spans the nation and stretches back a generation. The ensuing plot, like Studer's life, favors the scenic route over tight logic and methodical analysis. Quirky characters abound. Studer dabbles in early fingerprint and fiber analysis, trades crime theories with his equally eccentric wife and nearly dies after being arrested in a massive misunderstanding.First published in 1936, Glauser's offbeat tale, alternately chilling and droll, offers welcome insight into early European crime fiction. (Kirkus Reviews)

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Friedrich Glauser is a legendary figure in European crime writing. He was a morphine and opium addict much of his life and began writing crime novels while an inmate at the Swiss insane asylum Waldau.

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