Cliff's comments (member since Sep 16, 2009)

Cliff's comments from the mystery lovers group.

I'm reading 'Der Richter und Sein Henker' (The Judge and his Hangman) and 'Der Verdacht' (Suspicion) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. These are two short novels published together in one volume. I'm reading them in the original German but they have also been published in English.

Dürrenmatt is quite famous as a playright apparently, but after reading the first of these stories, I have to say I think as a novelist he is a dud. Anyway, I will continue with the second.

Apparently 'The Judge and his Hangman' was made into an English language film in 1975 with Donald Sutherland playing the role of a corpse. It was given the title 'End of the Game' but apparently has been re-issued under other titles.

There are some prolific writers who spread their material awfully thin. Their books are rather like padded-out short stories. Elmore Leonard is one who comes to mind. One test is to read through a passage of a book and estimate how much of it could be deleted without disturbing the continuity of the story. Looking at the first dozen pages of his book 'Freaky Deaky' today (and it was a chore even to read that much) I guessed that easily three-quarters of the content was superfluous.