Robert Hültner

In the winter of 1922, Inspector Kajetan finds himself investigating the murder of a young girl on a remote Bavarian farm. Needless to say, it isn't as simple a case as it looks, and the three unemployed men arrested near the scene of the crime are curiously reluctant to confess. Surely Kajetan's superiors couldn't be implicated in a right-wing conspiracy to grab power in Munich? And that abandoned mine mentioned in passing in the opening pages surely can't be going to turn out to be in use as a secret arms cache...?

Well, yes, unfortunately this is about as predictable as a Weimar Krimi can be, and the thrilling underground episodes of the closing chapters are only missing Timmy the dog. Hültner has a long and distinguished career writing for film and TV, and it shows.

But, despite that, I liked the way he treats his main character: Kajetan isn't a rebel ahead of his time, he's a perfectly believable Bavarian policeman, who's grown up believing in the infallibility of the courts, the universal guilt of the poor, and the inestimable value of investigative techniques based on shouting a lot and hitting suspects where it doesn't show. It's only in the confused new post-war world that he's starting to question the morality of some of the things he and his colleagues are asked to do.… (mais)

J'ai d'abord été un peu perdu et me suis ennuyé car aucun personnage principal ne se dégage vraiment. En fait, le personnage, c'est la petite troupe de ce théâtre ambulant et on suit ce qui arrive à chacun de ses membres et à quelques villageois l'espace d'un été à peine. Mais lorsque j'ai compris que l'histoire se base sur des faits réels et que Schikaneder, le directeur de la troupe, a existé et travaillé effectivement pour Mozart au livret de La Flûte Enchantée, j'ai vu le roman sous un autre oeil et je ne regrette pas de l'avoir lu.… (mais)