Joe Muller, Detective: Being the Account of Some Adventures in the Professional Experience of a Member of the Imperial Austrian Police

by Auguste Groner, Grace Isabel Colbron (translator)

Excerpt from Joe Muller, Detective: Being the Account of Some Adventures in the Professional Experience of a Member of the Imperial Austrian Police

Joseph Muller's character is a strange mixture. The kindest-hearted man in the world, he is a human bloodhound when once the lure of the trail has caught him. He scarcely cats or sleeps when the chase is on, he does not seem to know human weakness nor fatigue, in spite of his frail body. Once put on a case his mind delves and delves until it finds a clue, then something awakes within him, a spirit akin to that which holds the bloodhound nose to trail, and he will accomplish the apparently impossible, he will track down his victim when the entire machinery of a great police department seems helpless to discover anything. The high chiefs and commissioners grant a condescending permission when Muller asks, May I do this? Or may I handle this case this way? Both parties knowing all the while that it is a farce, and that the department waits helpless until this hum ble little man saves its honour by solving some problem before which its intricate machinery has stood dazed and puzzled.

CONTENTS:
The Case of the Lamp that Went Out
The Case of the Registered Letter
The Case of the Pocket Diary Found in the Snow
The Case of the Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study
The Case of the Golden Bullet

Genres: Mystery

348 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1910

About the author

Auguste Groner (née Kopallik ) was an Austrian writer from Vienna. In english-speaking countries she often is known as Augusta Groner. She sometimes wrote under the masculine pseudonym August Groner, and also published under the pseudonyms Olaf Björnson, A. of the Paura, Renorga and Metis.

Reviews

[Mh430 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joseph Muller would have certainly stood out among the mystery books available to the public a century ago. He isn't British or American or French. Or even German, he's Austrian from a time when that country was part of an empire. Muller is a highly proficient detective whose remarkable intuitive abilities require him to tackle mysteries not just in Vienna and Budapest, but small rural villages as well. He has a national reputation for infallibility and yet is a quiet, self-effacing man. Still, he knows he is very good at his job, so good in fact that he realizes that some of the crimes he investigates can only be solved by himself. And that knowledge can be troubling because there are cases where his idea of justice differs from that of the government he serves.

[Jayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many different stories. It's hard to review them all but it was lovely to read a mystery in between other books.

[Jan Moens · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10

[Jan Moens · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10