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Der Richter und sein Henker [The Judge and His Hangman] is a novella by the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt written in 1950. It was first published in English in 1955, in a translation by Therese Pol. A new translation by Joel Agee appeared in 2006, published together with Suspicion as The Inspector Barlach Mysteries, with a foreword by Sven Birkerts. Together with Dürrenmatt's The Pledge: Requiem for the Detective Novel, these fictions are considered classics of crime fiction, fusing existential philosophy and the detective genre.

The main character is Commissioner Bärlach, who is about to die and must solve a murder from Bern with his assistant Tschanz. He encounters his old friend/enemy Gastmann, whom Tschanz suspects is the murderer. Bärlach discovers that Tschanz was the murderer, and Tschanz admits to using Gastmann to cover it up.

Gastmann and Bärlach go back twenty years. Gastmann, as Bärlach well knew, had pursued a lifelong career as a purveyor of crime, evil in its comprehensiveness, arrogant and mocking of civilization itself. Gastmann remembered to Bärlach: "I wanted to prove that it was possible to commit a crime that couldn't be solved." Gastmann was right. The central question of this book is whether or not it is right to frame a person for a crime they didn't commit when they committed another crime that was never solved. Bärlach affirms the question when he says to Gastmann: "I couldn't prove that it was you who committed the first crime, but I am transferring this crime to you" - therefore, Gastmann, the very embodiment of evil criminality, was finally defeated.

The interplay between Bärlach and Tschanz takes on a symbolic dimension. Tschanz, the ambitious underling, insists on the efficacy of modern, scientific crimesolving methods "from the Chicago school". Bärlach is skeptical, relying instead on his deep knowledge of human motives, born of lifelong experience. While Tschanz's methods make ostensible progress on the case, ultimately it is Bärlach's intuitive sense that enables him to determine the truth, on the one hand, and settle old scores, on the other.

One can understand the novella also as question: "When humans determine themselves the fate of others they become the judges and when they become the instrument of others they become the henchmen. Having been set up by Bärlach to kill Gastmann, Tschanz says to Bärlach at the end of the story, "Then you were the judge and I the hangman". He then kills himself.

This work was made into a 1975 film titled The End of the Game directed by Maximilian Schell, with screenplay credits to Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Maximilian Schell. Jon Voight took lead billing as Walter Tschanz, with Martin Ritt as Hans Bärlach and Robert Shaw as Richard Gastmann. Jacqueline Bisset and Friedrich Dürrenmatt also appeared in the film.

Source: Der Richter und Sein Henker (Translation)

• Friedrich Dürrenmatt home page sponsored by the University of Chicago Press. Includes a 1969 interview with Dürrenmatt, his story "Smithy" and essay "Automobile and Railroad Nations," and essays on Dürrenmatt.