Stiff pinch
Stiff Pinch (English title: Snuff ) is a fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett . It is the thirty-ninth Discworld novel. Stiff Prize was published in 2011 , it won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize in 2012 and was nominated for the Locus Award as well as the Prometheus Award . The action takes place in the Käsedicksche country estate of Crundell. Stiff Pinch is one of the city watch stories , which is why Commander Mumm and his family bear the brunt of the story in the countryside . What was actually planned as a vacation quickly blows the commander's face as a criminally stiff pinch . The country life , the newly established ethnic group of goblins , slavery and the importance of social norms are the issues with which he is allowed to put up. In the end, there is actually a real hobby for Samuel Mumm, which not only surprises him.
action
Stiff Pinch can be classified in the city guards row, although most of the action takes place in the countryside. Nevertheless, it is Commander Samuel Mumm who plays the main role in these unfamiliar areas, at his side Lady Sybil , the six-year-old Sam junior and her butler Willikins. The location of the action is the country estate of Crundells, popularly known as Gut Käsedick, and its immediate surroundings. Ibid, on the orders of Lord Ventinari and eagerly advocated by his wife Sybil, Mumm has to spend two weeks vacation, which Mumm initially feels like a banishment.
On his first long walk, Mumm delves deeply into the complex relationships of rural life. Jiminy, the pub owner of the village inn “Goblinkopf”, an ex-police officer who does not want to be recognized as such, introduces him to some of his customers. Mumm donates a local round and is initially tolerated. His desperate attempt to understand the obscure rules of the croquet game played in front of the pub, and a strange encounter with old Lord Rust in a wheelchair, leave Mumm suspicious that country life is not quite as stupid as he imagines it to be.
On his second trip to the village, Mumm gets in the way of the village blacksmith Jethro Jefferson. Jethro, a quick-tempered, irascible young man full of egalitarian ideas, challenges Vimes to fight for his ducal property, which he accepts with pleasure, but insists on having Willikins write down the terms of the fight. The blacksmith is strong but completely inexperienced in common fights. So the fight doesn't last long, but the loser suggests that not everything is as nice as it seems in this rural idyll. Mumm was to find out details at midnight in the grove of the dead on the hill, which heralds the actual beginning of the novel.
At witching hour, after a strenuous evening party where Mumm meets several neighbors, including the well-known children's book author Felizitas Kefer, he and Willikins move to the grove of the dead. Anyone who doesn't expect them there is the blacksmith, but someone seems to have caused a bloodbath. However, there is nowhere to be found a corpse and only a severed goblin claw, adorned with a pretty stone ring, indicates the identity of the victim.
The next morning, the village policeman Volker Aufstrich is on the mat to arrest Samuel Mumm for the murder of the blacksmith Jefferson. Mumm is not really surprised and gets involved in this farce. After teaching Volker how to make a proper arrest, inspecting the cleanliness of the dump that is used as a prison in the village, and getting to know Volker's mother and her gossip specialties, he has himself sworn in as an auxiliary policeman by Sergeant Aufstrich. When a well-known goblin named Stinky takes a seat on Mumm's lap and demands justice, the story slowly picks up speed. Stinky leads the two policemen to the gallows hill and into the cave where his clan is at home. The Calling Darkness , Mumm's demonic souvenir from Koomtal (see: Klonk! ), Ensures that he sees better in this cave than in daylight and speaks and understands the language of the goblins like one. In the depths of the hill, they are then confronted with the remains of the nightly carnage. While Volker tries to keep his breakfast to himself, Mumm examines the body of the young goblin girl, who, although she was obviously pregnant, was downright dismembered. He vows to the assembled clan to catch the killer and bring him to justice.
Meanwhile, a narrative side strand leads to Ankh-Morpork , where the duo Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs , on patrol, decide to take a small tour of the trading house of Konfusius Grütze. Plenty of free tobacco products, including a really big cigar for Sergeant Colon, reinforce the impression that Mr. Grütze is doing an excellent job right now. On the guard, when Colon is about to smoke the unexpected gift, the cigar begins to speak and sob. An immediate forensic investigation of this tobacco product seems inevitable. Igor and Sergeant Kleinpo dissect the suspicious object and unearth a small, shiny object that Fred Colon immediately seizes and declares his property. Grinsi Kleinpo, who suspects the object, asks Colon to put the little piece of jewelry down again. Whereupon he realizes that he can't. The small vessel, a special unggue pot of the goblins, as the dwarf explains, remains tied to Fred Colon's hand as if glued to it. "Sergeant", Grinsi comments on the event, "I think that you made your life very interesting in one fell swoop."
Vimes learned from Volker, the village policeman, that something ugly happened to the goblins three years ago. He had to stay indoors, but could clearly remember the whining and screaming. To find out what happened back then, Sam Mumm visits his neighbor Felizitas Kefer, whom he is familiar with from reading aloud to Sam junior in the evenings (Melvin and the pus, Daphne and the nasal poppers, Piesel, Eine Welt aus Kaka). In her spare time, she teaches goblin children and now tells him that a large part of the goblin clan was then forced into slavery by local rangers. Details about the perpetrators or the people behind them and their goals were not known to her, only that the goblins were taken away with the river boat in the direction of Quirm. Afterwards, Mumm hears harp music played by a goblin girl for the first time. The virtuosity of Tears of the Mushroom, Fräulein Kefer's favorite pupil, freezes the music buff Mumm in awe. He knows perfectly well that Sybil has to hear that! And brings her here together with Sam junior and both are absolutely delighted. After Lady Sybil learns that the murdered goblin girl played the harp just as well, if not better, the landlady authorizes her commander to take serious action on this matter.
A strict interrogation of the pub owner reveals two names. A certain Straßfurt accompanied by Edi Flatter had been in the pub on the night of the murder and had bragged about an unggue pot. There is an address from Flatter and Mumm picks him up on the same day, including a large amount of contraband. The tobacco would still be considered a minor offense, but the various troll drugs, from platters to sledges, would cost Flatter the head. So he cooperates and becomes Mumm's key witness. He incriminates Straßfurt for the murder, but behind it all, the young Lord Rust seems to be the real puller and responsible for the smuggling and enslavement of the goblins. And then he learns that the goblins had another slave action the previous night.
The prisoners and Strasbourg are currently sailing down the Quaier on the river boat " Dicke Ditte" . Most of the waters of the Oktarine grasslands flow into the Quaier. People also call the river “the deceptive old man”. It meanders in leisurely loops all the way down to Quirm and there it pours into the sea. Accompanied by Volker and Stinky, the newly qualified goblin auxiliary policeman, Samuel Mumm sets out to pursue the chase, initially on horseback. When they caught up with the ship, a huge storm is brewing that breaks out after the three of them have boarded the convoy. In the midst of the fighting, a so-called dam breach occurs on the river behind them and the Quaier is worthy of its questionable nickname. Ultimately, fat Ditte rides down the river on a huge flood wave and slaps somewhere on the beach. All survived, but Straßfurt escaped.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Colon's health in Ankh-Morpork has deteriorated dramatically. The unggue pot "soul-of-tears" confuses his consciousness and he begins to feel and act like a goblin. As Captain Carrot and Sergeant Angua find out, only a young, childbearing goblin girl can free Colon from the pot. But there is no goblin cave and no goblin clan to be found far and wide. Despair spreads. The wholesaler Grütze remembers that the cigar he gave Colon came from a shipment from Wiewunderland, usually not known as a place of residence for goblins. Little Crazy Arthur, air scout for the guard, agrees to fly there and back within a day. What he finds there defies description. Death, despair, hunger and misery reign among the enslaved goblins. He frees the slaves in a heroic We-are-the-greatest! Action and flies back to report.
The situation around Fred Colon has now come to a head that it is decided to disrupt the commander's vacation. The madman Arthur finds Samuel Mumm in Quirm, where he is intercepting the next slave ship. The kidnapped blacksmith Jefferson is also on board. After hearing the report from Little Mad Arthur, his orders were that Sergeant Colon, accompanied by a large part of the troops, be transferred immediately to Gut Käsedick.
Now the major cleaning begins. The corrupt judiciary of the district is arrested, the sadistic Straßfurt comes to an appropriate end and the young Lord Rust has to go into exile after a fortune. Most importantly, Lady Sybil and Samuel Mumm ensure that goblins are legally recognized as human-like creatures by all relevant heads of state. It turns out that goblins can handle the clack extremely well, which gives them a professional perspective.
Surprisingly, Mumm discovered his passion for river navigation during this exhausting vacation and indulged in a hobby for the first time in his life.
expenditure
- In Dt. transfer by Gerald Jung. Manhattan, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-442-54705-0
- Unabridged audiobook. Read by Jens Wawrczeck. The Hörverlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-86717-884-6
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.locusmag.com/News/2012/05/2012-locus-award-finalists/
- ↑ Libertarian Futurist Society: PROMETHEUS AWARD FINALISTS ANNOUNCED . Retrieved July 10, 2012.