There are times in literature when less is more, and Andrea Maria Schenkel does a fine job of demonstrating just how effective a tightly controlled narrative and sparse prose style can be in The Murder Farm, which won several awards including the German Crime Prize as well as The Friedrich-Glauser Prize. This is not a conventional crime story, rather it is a chilling account of the murder of a farm family and their maid in a remote part of southern Germany. Although fictionalized, the story is based on an actual murder case that occurred in 1922 and remains unsolved. The obvious comparison is to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which I read earlier this year. Both have interesting narrative styles that make use of reportage to tell the story and both are totally gripping, if bleak, reads.
The story begins very unobtrusively as the unnamed narrator explains to the reader the circumstances surrounding his knowledge of what happened in the village of Tannöd in the decade following WWII. Despite the ravages of the war, Tannöd appeared relatively unscathed. He found it an "island of peace" in the summer just after the war when he returned to visit, yet emotions were simmering beneath the surface only to be exposed in a brutal act nearly ten years later. In the chapters that follow, murderer, victims and witnesses alike each have an opportunity to tell their part of the story, throwing light onto all the nooks and crannies revealing that Tannöd was not nearly as idyllic as it appeared to be. Initially it is a little disorienting to read so many different perspectives--some straightforward third-person narratives and others eyewitness accounts, yet the story gains momentum with each new detail revealed piecing together the puzzle of the murder.
The Danner farm is quite isolated and the family keeps mostly to themselves. Old Danner is a cantankerous man who shows little warmth and no love to the wife he married in order to get his hands on her family's farm. Completely browbeaten she finds solace in her pious devotion to God, spending hours reading the Bible. His pride and joy, however, is his daughter Barbara who lives on the farm with her two children after her husband left her. It's not unusual for the family to work in the forest cutting trees, so when they're not seen for several days no one seems particularly worried. However after Frau Danner doesn't appear at mass and the granddaughter misses school, someone is sent around to check on the family. What they find is horrific--everyone is dead, killed with a pickaxe and covered in straw or left in their beds.
Being the mid-1950s what comes to mind is that a crime so shocking, and in a place so peaceful and seemingly far from troubles, heralds an end to innocence. But what lurks beneath the tranquil surface of Tannöd is anything but innocent. Crimes both as a direct result of the war, and some far more intimate and therefore more insidious and terrible belie the serene appearance of Tannöd. The fact is, the villagers simply turned a blind eye to what they knew or believed to be true. Schenkel offers many possible motivations for the murders as well as a few red herrings. The reader is privy to information that the villagers are not, so while the murderer is at least revealed to us, we're still left pondering the nature of the crimes.
The Murder Farm is translated from German by Anthea Bell. Although I can't speak for how closely the translation matches the original, I will say the novel read beautifully. If I didn't know it was translated I wouldn't have guessed as it is written in very plain (and that's meant to be complimentary), straightforward language. I will be looking for more or Anthea Bell's work. Andrea Maria Shenkel can also consider her second book, Ice Cold, as sold as I plan on finding a copy soon. I read The Murder Farm as part of the German Literature Month.
You can find more reviews of The Murder Farm at Reading Matters and Eurocrime--start with Maxine's review and then click through to two more.