A cop on the train

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A bull on a train is a novel by the German writer Franz Dobler . The novel is about a policeman who tries to process a failed mission with an aimless train journey in which he shot a person. It was published in 2014 by Tropen Verlag, an imprint from Klett-Cotta Verlag . In the following year he won the German Crime Prize .

content

Fallner's journey begins in an ICE at Munich Central Station

During a night-time operation, the 43-year-old Munich police officer Robert Fallner shoots the young violent criminal Maarouf R. Fallner believes he acted in self-defense because he claims to have seen the boy pull a gun. But a weapon is not found, Fallner is suspended and his colleague and friend Eric Maier testifies against him. Traumatized by what happened, Fallner begins to drink uncontrollably, and his relationship with his wife Jaqueline, also a policewoman, deteriorates noticeably. The discussions with the psychotherapist Dr. Vehring don't seem to be of any help to Fallner, when the son of a shunter falls on the idea of healing himself with a long-cherished dream. He buys a Bahncard 100 and drives aimlessly back and forth across Germany.

Fallner's companions are an illegally acquired Makarov , allegedly the weapon with which Lee Morgan was shot, and the dead man's ghost, who appears to him in day and night dreams and scornfully comments on his actions. Despite being unable to work, his boss gave him the job of looking for a serial killer who was driving a train, who could be linked to various murders in the vicinity of train stations. But most of the time Fallner only comes into conversation with casual travel acquaintances. He is particularly attracted to the stranded and loitering outsiders in train stations, and so he messes with local police officers who harass a homeless person in Berlin Central Station until his colleague Telling can appease the situation. Fallner stops at numerous shabby train station booths, and his alcohol consumption repeatedly leads to nightmarish delirium .

For the first time in months he visits his former friend Eric Maier, but he can no longer access his colleague and lets his anger run wild in an outbreak of violence. Because he suspects his wife of cheating on him, he observes Jaqueline from his local bar, Bertls Eck . When Dr. Vehring unexpectedly interrupts his therapy, he urges her to see the results of Eric's Theparie on a house call: his colleague confessed to having put Maarouf's pistol aside to incriminate Fallner and win Jacqueline over. In fact, Fallner catches the two of them cheating and threatens them with his Makarov until Eric admits the embezzlement and hands him the dead man's Glock . With the relieving piece of evidence in his pocket, which looks completely different from what he remembers, Fallner finally dares the trip home to his demented father, whom he hated all his life because of his brutality. At the side of his childhood friend Johanna, the dead boy stays calm in his head for the first time and sleeps.

reception

Franz Dobler : "It is the novel that is certainly the furthest away from myself".

Dobler's novel A Bull on the Train has been discussed in numerous German-language feature articles. In November 2014 it reached number 1 on the KrimiZEIT best list . In the 2014 annual ranking he was ranked 5th. In 2015 he received the German Crime Prize in the national category .

In the reviews, it was often questioned whether a bull on the train should still be counted as crime fiction . Thomas Wörtche judges it to be "a complete, really good detective novel". There is a case and a resolution, but for Thomas Stillbauer the novel is a “psychogram, a wacky rail movie”. The “narrative strands jumble”, a thriller plot appears briefly, is “again fantasized” on the next page. According to Andreas Ammer , the book is “not necessarily something for the hardcore thriller fan” , “but for those who enjoy digressions”. And according to Elmaer Krekeler, it is “something for people with an extended concept of thriller. A literary feat. [...] A book whose images fly by like the landscapes on the window pane of the train. A terrific trip. "

For Jürgen Kaube, Dobler's language is “maximally uncomfortable and from the accuracy of the sleepless consciousness, to call it hardened and not suitable for young people would be a gross understatement.” The protagonist's “continuous inner monologue ” leaves nothing out: “Sex and jazz, psychotherapy and prostitution, City and garbage, dropouts and dropins, the parents and the wife and again and again the life of the police ”. Alexander Cammann reads “a damn casual piece of art” that Dobler had stolen from real life, “imitated linguistically brilliantly with the utmost precision, in vulgar, loud dialogues and Fallner's manic constant self-talk.” According to Thomas Wörtche, Dobler has “incredibly good eyes and Ears for the madness, the terrible comedy and the madness not only of the social pandemonium that travels on trains ”. Demit counts the novel as "one of the classics of train travel literature from Patricia Highsmith to HRF Keating ". According to Andreas Schnell, Dobler has combined the “original American genres of road literature and hardboiled crime thriller and transferred them to German conditions”.

For Franz Kotteder, the policeman Fallner is a typical Dobler protagonist, a broken hero and "rather battered, lonely wolf". His name says it all: he is a fallen angel and investigates his own case throughout the novel. Investigating one's own cause becomes a “puzzle with reality” in which “truth and fantasy often mix”. So the novel ends with a mystery-typical resolution, but the reader cannot be sure "how much of this resolution corresponds to the truth and what is perhaps just the result of a strangely sick fantasy." For Elmar Krekeler, Fallner is in any case " the most unbelievable literary witness in its history ”. Dobler describes: “It's also about [...] how much memories can be deceptive. Something new is added every time, and in the end it is unclear what is still real. "With the figure of a policeman," who no longer wants to be or no longer can be ", he has" gone so far from me as never before " . He continued the story of Robert Fallner in 2016 with a slap in the face .

expenditure

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Franz Kotteder : Lawless Policeman . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of September 17, 2014.
  2. ↑ Review notes on A bull on a train at perlentaucher.de
  3. ↑ Tobias Gohlis : The ten best crime novels in November 2014 . In: Die Zeit No. 46/2014.
  4. ↑ Tobias Gohlis: The best crime novels of 2014 . In: Die Zeit from December 18, 2014.
  5. ↑ 31st German Crime Prize 2015 at www.krimilexikon.de.
  6. ↑ a b Thomas Wörtche : Leichenberg 09/2014 . In: caliber .38 .
  7. ↑ Thomas Stillbauer: The inspector drives around . In: Frankfurter Rundschau of October 7, 2014.
  8. ↑ Andreas Ammer Rowling's book is unfortunately good . In: Deutschlandfunk from December 19, 2014.
  9. ↑ a b Elmar Krekeler: A bull drives through dark Germany . In: Die Welt from December 2, 2014.
  10. ↑ Jürgen Kaube : Operational delay of life . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 27, 2014.
  11. ↑ Alexander Cammann: Lips on the weapon . In: Die Zeit from November 20, 2014.
  12. ↑ Andreas Schnell: Archetypes on the move . In: the daily newspaper of November 22, 2014.