Like animals

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Like the Animals is a crime novel by the Austrian writer Wolf Haas . It was published in 2001 and is the fifth case in the Brenner crime series .

action

Flak tower in Vienna's Augarten

The setting for the crime novel is Vienna , where the private detective Simon Brenner is transferred in the hope of getting his application for early retirement through. A little pimp named Schmalzl, who also runs a donation company for animal welfare, hires Brenner to track down the person who has been distributing dog biscuits with pins in the Augarten for weeks and has killed several dogs in this way. While Brenner is being familiarized with the case, another event begins the actual action: a free-roaming fighting dog bites a young donor booer who works for Schmalzl's animal welfare company to death. It turns out that this attack dog has inherited millions from its previous owner, with which the former flak tower in Augarten is to be converted into an animal shelter in the foreseeable future . However, the outbreak of the dog endangers the implementation of the plan, in which the notary Hojac and the architect who is entrusted with the reconstruction of the flak tower are equally interested. Ms. Hartwig, the animal keeper who wanted to "hand over" the fighting dog to the police, disappears. After Brenner falsely suspected Hojac of killing Frau Hartwig for a while, the architect, who saw his job in jeopardy and therefore almost kills Brenner, turns out to be Frau Hartwig's murderer. However, the architect is killed by the rotor blade of a helicopter during a rescue operation for Brenner. Incidentally, the culprit in the case of the dog biscuits turns out to be a pubescent girl who was attacked by a dog as a child and disfigured for her life and who wants to seek revenge in this way.

Narrative technique and language

As with the other Brenner thrillers , the plot appears secondary to the novel's original formal design. The narrator figure, who still does not appear as an actor, gradually unravels the story to be told - in a detour that reflects Brenner's approach to solving his criminal cases. Both linguistically and in terms of narrative technology, the narrative stream shows many features of the language variety spoken language : Colloquial and dialect elements, fragmentary sentences (especially often without a verb), loose sequence of individual facts without structuring conjunctions, contaminations , pleonasms , expression oscillating between euphemism and hyperbole, as well the use of the placeholder particle "ding", which - without syntactic integration - can replace practically all terms and facts that are difficult or impossible to put into words, are the most conspicuous features. On the narrative level, it is the stream of consciousness of the narrator who seems to deviate from the plot again and again, letting associations lead to detailed reflections on more or less banal topics and more or less subtle social criticism that reinforce the impression of an oral narration . Haas' artful technique consists in giving these seemingly loose digressions meaning for the plot of the novel and thus weaving an extremely dense network of people, locations, themes and symbols, all of which relate incessantly to one another.

This dense narrative network typical of Haas can be illustrated using the figure constellation. Besides Simon Brenner, only the narrator and the character of Berti Schattauer appear in all or several of the novels in the series. Around this basic constellation, Haas designs a new network of acting people each time, which is relatively compact, but extremely complex due to connections that are only gradually worked out. This complexity is enriched in Wie die Tiere with a leitmotif in the form of a song ("Mama" by Heintje ), which refers to several people (e.g. the mothers who climb the barricades against the dogs that run free in the city park), to important ones Relationships between people (e.g. the mother-son relationships Ms. Summer - Mr. Hojac and medical officer - architect) and refer to the plot time (the dramatic finale of the plot takes place on Mother's Day).

Another feature that recurs in Haas' novels is the attention the author pays to people's names. The fun game that the author builds around the word / name "Summer" (family name of the late millionaire, door buzzer, burner, who hums the song "Mama" to himself, the English term for "summer" etc.) adds join the dense narrative network. In several places, the narrator himself reflects on the names of the people involved (e.g. the “unsuitable” combination of Manu Prodinger) or - somewhat more subtle - the naming of animals, which sometimes borders on the absurd (an aggressive fighting dog called “Puppi”). In view of this obvious sensitivity, it seems to be more than a coincidence that the notary, characterized as "fat", changed his previous name to Hojac of all places. Rather, the author evidently evokes references to the Austrian BZÖ politician who swapped the Slavic Hojac for the German name Westenthaler (see Peter Westenthaler ).

literature