Detective Story (Vintage International)

Detective Story (Vintage International)
by Imre Kertesz

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Book Summary Information

Author: Imre Kertesz
Translator: Tim Wilkinson
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-03-10
ISBN: 0307279650
Number of pages: 128
Publisher: Vintage

Book Reviews of Detective Story (Vintage International)

Book Review: "Those in power first, then the law."
Summary: 5 Stars

"Detective Story," by Nobel prize winner Imre Kertesz, is deceptively "a simple story," a short prison memoir coolly told by the condemned detective Antonio Rojas Martens. As one third of an elite corps of secret police, Martens relates how he routinely did his job and conducted an "investigation," which culminated in the deaths of two innocent people. The regime he worked for has since been overturned and now it is Martens' turn to die.

Martens provides us with the inside view of the agents of power, enforcers whose sole aim is to maintain order for those in control. Such authority goes beyond the law, beyond the rights of the individual, and beyond morality. As Kertesz, whose story in "Fatelessness" of his time as a young inmate at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, well understands, unchecked power, answerable to no one, will lead to the destruction of the individual and to barbarisms aimed at whole populations. So Kertesz places himself in the mind of what might very well have been that of a typical Nazi agent. Martens is sometimes confused, subject to headaches, and experiences fits of stammering, but he admires the cold logic of his boss Diaz and the regime he serves. He finally understands his mission: "We could no longer place our trust in anyone except ourselves. Oh, and in destiny...."

This story contains an unsettling message for our time, and chillingly reflects today's headlines. Although no country is mentioned in the novella, its setting could be Iran, China, North Korea, somewhere in South America, etc. I can't help but think that Kertesz had the United States in mind as well as he refers to the Homeland Department a number of times. And the facts presented in Chalmers Johnson's "Nemesis" about the worldwide influence of the U.S. military make that possibility all the more plausible.

I strongly recommend this gripping and very well-written work.

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Summary of Detective Story (Vintage International)

From Nobel Laureate Imre Kertész comes this riveting novel about a torturer for the secret police of a Latin American regime who tells the haunting story of the father and son he ensnared and destroyed.

Now in prison, Antonio Martens is a torturer for a recently defunct dictatorship. He requests and is given writing materials in his cell, using them to narrate his involvement in the torture and assassination of a wealthy and prominent man and his son whose principled but passive opposition to the regime left them vulnerable to the secret police. Inside Martens's mind, we inhabit the rationalizing world of evil and see firsthand the inherent danger of inertia during times of crisis. A slim, explosive novel of justice railroaded by malevolence, Detective Story is a warning cry for our time.

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