Versprechen, Das. Requiem auf den Kriminalroman
Versprechen, Das. Requiem auf den Kriminalroman, a short detective novel by F. Dürrenmatt, published in 1958. It began as a commission to write the script for a film, Es geschah am hellichten Tage, shown in English as Assault in Broad Daylight. The story, told by a retired police chief of Zurich, concerns Matthäi, a former commissary of cantonal police; he and a friend have just seen Matthäi as the unkempt and apathetic owner of a petrol station. Matthäi's competence and singleminded determination as a detective had earned him the nickname ‘Matthäi am Letzten’ and secondment to Jordan.
A murder took place, and Matthäi went to the scene. The victim, discovered by a pedlar, was a little girl, Gritli Moser, who had been so brutally assaulted that no one could bring himself to break the news to her parents. Matthäi undertook the mission; in her distress, Gritli's mother asked him to swear that he would find the murderer. Matthäi gave the promise, which is the title of the novel.
In order to fulfil his promise Matthäi forfeited his appointment in the police by not going to Jordan. Single-handed, he constructed a theory, connecting the murder of Gritli with other sexual murders, deducing that the criminal had a black American car and travelled frequently between Graubünden and Zurich, luring the girls with a particular kind of chocolate. Following up his theory, he took over a filling station, acquired a housekeeper with a little girl like Gritli, Annemarie, whom he used as a bait. Anne-marie stays out late, but remains mysterious about the affair, which has no sequel. Yet Matthäi goes on year by year, obsessed with the detection of the murderer. In the end he reaches the state of mental and physical deterioration in which he was seen at the petrol station by the narrator, the retired police chief. He knows that Matthäi's theory was correct, but an accident has denied him the confirmation; for on her death-bed, a Frau Schrott has made a confession to the police chief, revealing that the wanted criminal was Albertchen, her second husband, killed years before in a car crash on the day he set out to commit his fourth murder.
