Crash in Gündlingen
Das dunkle Schweigen*
Wolfgang
Schorlau
Editions Kiepenheuer & Witsch
Cologne 2006 • 333 pages
Elfriede Müller
Translation: Jamie Andrews
Studies in National Socialism are still going to provide much raw
material for the detective novel. Although many claim to know it
all, there remains nonetheless a succession of shadowy corners that
deserve to be explored. Wolfgang Schorlau has devoted his second
novel to one of these shadowy corners: the lynching of Allied troops
by civilian populations, the number of cases of which is estimated
at over a thousand. In this case, reported in the Stuttgarter
Zeitung newspaper, the African-American pilot of a US bomber
plane that crashed in March 1945 was almost certainly lynched by
local peasants.
In the novel, Steven Blackmore comes down near Bruchsal on 1 March
1945, and never sees his family in Chicago again. After a breathless
opening, we find ourselves in a murky story based on real-life criminal
cases, in which Schorlau's detective Dengler must get to the bottom
of his second assignment. Dengler is an old hand, and at the same
time of course completely original: a former cop with the BKA (Federal
Bureau of Criminal Investigations) who was charged with tracking
down terrorists, he is also a jazz musician. As the novel begins,
he is getting by- with more or less success- running his own private
detective agency, when he takes on the case of two brothers and sisters
and their inheritance, specifically a hotel that their father inexplicably
signed over to someone else on 24 June 1947.
The quality of the two strands of the
novel differs greatly. The description of Steven Blakemore's story
before and after the bombardment of Bruchsal, the light brought
to bear on the death throes of National Socialism, on the militias,
and of everyday life in the town of Idar-Oberstein : all this is
remarkably accomplished. However, while the plot is well constructed,
the contemporary narrative only really takes off at the end of
the novel, at the point when the two time-periods meet. This could
be because the characters are flimsy and, with the exception of
the pickpocket Olga, are far from convincing. With the best will
in the world, Stuttgart will never compare to a large American city
when it comes to a backdrop for a detective story, although the villagers
in 1940s Germany are extraordinarily well portrayed. Likewise, the
life story of Steven Blackmore is enthralling and conjures up the
spirit of the era, although the meeting between his son –the celebrated
jazz musician Junior Wells- with Dengler in Chicago is a little far-fetched.
But this meeting has to take place so that Dengler can take on the
mission to find his father, and gradually find out what links Blackmore
with the case of the inheritance. The stubbornness of the aged villagers
does not surprise us. Their memories held in check cannot be related
any more explicitly: ‘tell them, they have to stop digging up these
old stories. The consequences are worse for them than for us. Turning
up that old shit will do them harm. It's their shit.”
In spite of the weakness of the opening, this detective novel is
very readable, and as the pages turn, the tension rises.
* The dark silence
