"Reader Beware: SPOILERS"
Ulf Durling is a name that very few people , I suspect, will know . He already deserved a mention in the appendix of the famous Mystères à huis clos by Roland Lacourbe, with its french title: Pour un bout de fromage [1].
The reason is clear: in that
list , the best Locked Rooms were designed in the opinion of a pool of experts.
And Gammal ost has a very nice Locked Room : no doubt about it ![2]
Ulf Durling is a Swedish
writer, born in 1940 in Stockholm and became then, after graduation and
specialization, a famous psychiatrist. In 1971 he tried to start their own com
Gammal Ost which was a great success, so much to
convince others to write . It 's still alive.
[2] Some time ago, after reading my review, John Pugmire
was convinced to translate and publish it because of its small publishing house. The translation was
prepared from the edition at the Swedish original, this proving
to be a valuable fund of seriousness, and not from translations already made in French and in Italian, even translating John
usually from the French. Because is better to always
refer to the original edition and
not translate taking as a basis
a translation into other languages,
since the misinterpretation of one
(or not quite complete
translation), it would become in
practice a recovery translation from others.
Now the translation from Swedish is output in the US under the title Hard Cheese, published by the International Locked Room by John Pugmire.
The plot takes place in a
Swedish pensioner, where they live: the retired printer, founder of the Club
of Mystery, Johann Lundgren; Carl Bergmann, bookseller retired, he also a
founding member, and a physician, Dr. Nylander, belonging to the club of
mystery; Alex Nilsson; the traveling salesman Johanson; the two teachers,
Miss Hurting - Olofson and Mrs. Soderstrom; Marshal of the army Renqvist .
One of the guests of the
pension, Alex Nilsson, 52, already abiding by a few weeks in retirement, is
found dead in his room, locked from the inside: lies " fully clothed,
next to the bed, as if he were beating the wounded head against the back ...
blood on his face and the front of the shirt. On the table .. a bottle of wine
and the wine upside down .. spilled on the floor ... and even on the face and
shirt Nilsson ". In addition, it is found in the trash a piece of cheese ;
and on the bedside table , a very powerful diuretic , the Diclorotride -K.
There is also a towel stained with red ( wine only ? ) .
But has anyone heard a commotion
in the room the night before , as if there had been a quarrel and then there
was a second person , because even appears the request of a patch, by the
victim to Mr Blom, the owner of the pension: yet there is no injury , even very
small body of Nilsson.
Ephraim Nylander assumed
that the quarrel ended in tragedy , and that the murderer didn’t of what it had
happened : in essence, the death would have occurred at a later time , and then
the same victim would have been to turn off the radio, remained on during most
of the night, to close the door and then to remain, and then to succumb
for a stroke previously reported; Johann Lundgren instead ties to Alex Nilsson
to his brother, the mysterious visitor Edvin Nilsson , who would be responsible
for a fatal poisoning by methanol (a little ' what happened in Italy many years
ago), and would be back by a mysterious inheritance. Edvin Nilsson would have
been the guest of his brother in his room at the pension house, without anyone
knowing, and to do so they would come up with a trick , that Alex would
pretend to be lame because his brother was, and in this way they would be were
traded for one another, and there would be no problems. The two would have had
a row and Edvin would kill the other brother . Finally Carl offers his theory :
the radio “on” during the night, would mean the manner with which Nilsson would
fall asleep because of the wine drunk , because he would have an appointment
with his murderer who is supposed to be the husband of the daughter: i.e.
Edvin Nilsson would blackmail
Edvin his daughter and her
husband. In practice, according to this latest reconstruction, there would have
been two visits : the first of a random buddy of Nilsson , with whom he would
eat cheese and drink wine, and during which the visitor is injured so much as
Nilsson ask s Blom a patch ; then this goes away and here occurs the
second visit, during which the second visitor kills Nilsson and then, after
killing him with a blunt object , jump out of the window , using a mattress of
blankets taken from the pension , which then he sneaks back in across a
secondary port.
The second part of the novel
instead supports the theory of Gunnar Bergmann , son of Carl , and police
officer (Deputy Commissioner ) , according to which the death was due to
natural causes : a cerebral hemorrhage not caused by the blow, but that would
have caused the heel to the base of the blow.
The
third section is one in
which one of the three fans , Dr. Nylander , revises his previous theory
integrating it with all the new learned: he remodulates it. Nilsson
would have
had before his return to Sweden from America , a stroke or a cerebral
hemorrhage, which would have caused a emiparalisi: from it, the lame
movement lame . In addition, he would suffer for high blood pressure.
Just to
his state of health would be connected the medicine found on the bedside
table, a very powerful diuretic , the Diclorotride -K. How could a
patient very
diligent in taking the medication, die for a brain hemorrhage? For a
piece of
hard cheese and another medicine completely harmless .
Ephraim Nylander finds the
murderer , who had to protect someone, for which the Nilsson return would have
been a damage. A simple murder but equally highly ingenious.
In essence, at the novel by
Durling , the 3 major hypotheses head to three different sections of the novel,
of course, that frame the same truths , according to three perspectives and
three different views.
The novel is an excuse to
compare 3 different ways of seeing things. In essence Ulf Durling develops, to
the extreme, the confrontation / clash that it’s at Case for Three Detectives
by Leo Bruce , where the three detectives are caricatures of Poirot, Lord Peter
Wimsey and Father Brown. Moreover it must be remembered that already at
the The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley, different
exposures of the same background , performed by different characters, led to
the identification of several hypotheses with many different makers .
It 's the case yet to report
, as the same procedure was adopted in The Five Fragments by George
Dyers , another extraordinary novel very little known ; the same fact , that
seen from the perspective of five different witnesses, different angles and
reveals the truth.
A few years ago, in 2008, he was released a thriller,
Vantage Point, directed by Pete Travis, where to get to the truth would be
taken into consideration eight different angles of the same truth, narrated by
eight different characters.
Moreover, the movie probably
in turn, took its inspiration from the famous Kurosawa film “Rashomon”, in
which a crime story is told differently by different characters.
In fact, I would almost think that since space in the novel are many references
to the authors of the Mystery , which the novel is a tribute ( Bentley, Sayers
, Carr, Allingham , Christie , Millar , Brand, Milne , etc. .. ) , and even a
reference to the Conference of Dr. Fell in The Hollow Man by John
Dickson Carr, could very well be that happened rather than taking such Case for
Three Detectives by Leo Bruce , he had taken as his inspiration , just
The Five Fragments by George Dyers : could be valid both the first and the
second hypothesis . In fact, if the three sections of the book underlying to
three different formulations of the hypothesis accusatory , it is also true
that for the first formulation (the one that provides the Locked Room ) you get
three different sub- hypotheses , which, along with the second and third , they
would become five.
As part of the
divertissement , which is what is ultimately , the novel is , moreover ,
written in the form of parody . It is not a unique case , because at least in
very close to us , other authors have tried to bring their brick building of
the palace of Mystery, writing novels in which the protagonists are amateur
detectives who take the moves from other : so John Sladek , so Isaac Asimov, so
Peter Lovesey , so ... Ulf Durling .
The Locked Room is explained only in the first three hypotheses of the first part , because they belong to the idea of murder that includes the direct presence of the murderer with the victim, while in the second , there is not mention of murder because it is a natural death, while at the third par, the death by Nilsson designed with a murder in a few moments before it happens, assumes that the murderer is not in the room when Alex dies .
All at a very interesting novel , whose solution is already present in the first part , only that it is not probed properly, and that the final solution is made in front of the reader’s amazement, distracted by something else, not having a way to digest what he reads .
The Locked Room is explained only in the first three hypotheses of the first part , because they belong to the idea of murder that includes the direct presence of the murderer with the victim, while in the second , there is not mention of murder because it is a natural death, while at the third par, the death by Nilsson designed with a murder in a few moments before it happens, assumes that the murderer is not in the room when Alex dies .
All at a very interesting novel , whose solution is already present in the first part , only that it is not probed properly, and that the final solution is made in front of the reader’s amazement, distracted by something else, not having a way to digest what he reads .
Pietro
De Palma
Now the translation from Swedish is output in the US under the title Hard Cheese, published by the International Locked Room by John Pugmire.
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