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I liked this, but not as much as Friedrich's first detective novel, Der Richter und sein Henker. In fact, I don't think this one is a detective novel at all, but more like a thriller. The novel features Komissär Bärlach, Friedrich's indomitable detective from the first novel, and starts where we left off. This is in a hospital bed, and Bärlach is told he has another year to live, when he gains the unshakable suspicion that the much respected head of a local clinic is in reality a Nazi war criminal.

I am not going to spoil the fun for you, but half-way through, the novel develops into something more akin to an Alfred Hitchcock thriller than an Hercule Poirot mystery. And there would be nothing wrong with this as such, but half-way through something else changes: Bärlach seems to lose his sharply penetrating criminal mind and turns into a powerless old man, and I did not like that transformation. I did not like it because it felt oddly out-of-character; there was no obvious reason why our protagonist should allow himself to become powerless, and indeed he did not succeed in freeing himself from a predicament in the plot through his own devices, but came to rely entirely on luck, and on the unplanned assistance of others.

If Friedrich intended to play with the conventions of detective novels by turning his hero into a powerless victim half-way through the plot, fair enough. At least if that was his intention, I understand why the plot developed in this way. But if he planned to do this, I think there would have been ways to do this more convincingly.