Praise for Friedrich Glauser's other Sergeant Studer novels:
"Thumbprintis a fine example of the craft of detective writing in a period which fans will regard as the golden age of crime fiction."-The Sunday Telegraph

"In Matto's Realmis both a compelling mystery and an illuminating, finely wrought mainstream novel."-Publishers Weekly

"A despairing plot about the reality of madness and life, leavened with strong doses of bittersweet irony. The idiosyncratic investigation of In Matto's Realmand its laconic detective have not aged one iota."-Guardian

"With good reason, the German-language prize for detective fiction is named after Glauser. . . . He has Simenon's ability to turn a stereotype into a person, and the moral complexity to appeal to justice over the head of police procedure."-The Times Literary Supplement

When two women are "accidentally"killed by gas leaks, Sergeant Studer investigates the thinly disguised double murder in Bern and Basel. The trail leads to a geologist dead from a tropical fever in a Moroccan Foreign Legion post and a murky oil deal involving rapacious politicians and their henchmen. With the help of a hashish-induced dream and the common sense of his stay-at-home wife, Studer solves the multiple riddles on offer. But assigning guilt remains an elusive affair.

The third in the Sergeant Studer series.

"In the first English translation of a European cult classic originally published in Germany in 1936, the third in Glauser's absurdist Studer mystery series (after In Matto's Realm), Swiss police Sgt. Jacob Studer investigates two questionable deaths in Bern and Basel — both by gas leaks, both victims elderly women once married to the same man. Clues vanish while suspects disappear and acquire different identities. Studer chases a priest, Father Matthias, brother of the dead women's late husband, who may or may not have been an oil company geologist. Lovely Marie may be niece, daughter, secretary or lover to Matthias or the geologist. At a French Foreign Legion post in Morocco, Studer eventually finds the answers, which seem so simple (or are they?), to this hallucinatory, morally ambiguous case. Glauser, the namesake for the German equivalent of our Edgar Award, was a schizophrenic and drug addict who spent much of his life in mental institutions and prisons. His books, although written in a straightforward style, reveal the fine line between sanity and madness." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Diagnosed a schizophrenic, addicted to morphine and opium, Glauser spent the greater part of his life in psychiatric wards, insane asylums and prison. His Sergeant Studer novels have ensured his place as a cult figure in Europe.