Death In Summer by Michael Theurillat

          This book was both better, and worse, than I was expecting it to be.  Hence the middle of the road 2.5 Stars I have given it.  There is nothing really surprising or innovative here but there are moments that entertain.

First and foremost this is a thriller centred around the murder of a prominent banker on a Swiss gold course.  Swiss banks are, of course, internationally recognised for their tight lips and secure environs.  So what secrets could have led to this man's murder?  Just who where the clients that he looked after so well?  What did he know that caused his death?

Minor spoiler alert:
His death was nothing to do with his job.  In fact, banking is barely touched on and his illustrious clients have nothing to do with his untimely demise.

As you can probably tell from the above this is where I was hoping the tale would take us.  I was looking forward to espionage and double dealing in the rarefied air of the Alps.  Instead we are taken somewhere far more pedestrian, what should be a plot twist feels more like a standard deviation for the genre - it no doubt had more impact on original publication but this English Language translation has come a couple of years later and it suffers for the time delay.

Plot wise this would have been a 2 Star read.

However, what the author has done very well here is give us a sense of person, of place, and how that place informs the person.  Eschenbach is no great legal mind, he is no Sherlock Holmes.  What he is a working copper who knows his countrymen, knows his country and knows how people work on the inside.  This informs his behaviour at every turn and makes him feel all the more real to the reader.

There is rather too much dwelling on the weather - although when I read the book we were in the middle of a UK heatwave so to read of Zurich melting under the summer sun felt very easy to envisage.  In fact, the sections of the book that deal with Eschenbach's movements around the city as he ponders the case and his peregrinations to other Cantons and Countries are some of the best bits in the book.  His interactions with his erstwhile secretary, Rosa, and his new trainee, Jagmetti, are also enjoyable reading.

As a thriller I found this book to fail at every turn.  The plot was insufficient to carry the book and the twists were just not there.  There was also a sense of disconnect between events in such a way that any deduction that linked them together felt as though it was a complete leap of faith to reach that conclusion.

Where the book did work is as a study in people.  How the human animal can, and does, modify it's behaviour to suit a certain social situation or a particular place.  This is where the author excelled.  Unfortunately, it was not enough to salvage a rather turgid tale.

I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM READERS FIRST IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.