Guilt
A Short Story Collection by Ferdinand von Schirach
Review: Ferdinard von Schirach's second collection of short stories, simply titled Guilt, is a tautly written set of tales based on true-life crimes known to the author.
Most of these stories are truly short, some spanning less than five pages. They share a more-or-less common structure: a backstory in which characters are introduced and the crime committed or described; a first person account from the attorney — presumably the author himself, though that may not be a reasonable assumption to make — involved in the case that follows; and a final summary (or summation), often one that provides a personal observation or unexpected twist on the proceedings. Despite the brevity of the stories, the settings are frequently atmospheric and there's a surprising amount of character development.
The book's title suggests that all the stories share a common theme — guilt — and if so, it is one that comes with some subtlety attached to it; guilt is not always associated with, or limited to, the guilty. Indeed, a more obvious common thread to the stories might be ordinary people reacting to extraordinary situations.
The final tale, one not even three pages in length, provides a most entertaining twist on the collection as a whole. Guilt is a somewhat unusual collection of stories, one that clearly won't be to everyone's liking, but one that might cause readers to think a bit more about what the word means in a broader context.
Acknowledgment: Random House provided a copy of Guilt for this review.
Review Copyright © 2012 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Location(s) referenced in Guilt:
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Guilt by Ferdinand von Schirach
Publisher: Knopf
Format: Hardcover
ISBN-10: 0-307-59949-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-307-59949-0
Publication Date: January 2012
List Price: $24.00
Synopsis (from the publisher): On a sweltering day in August, a small town drunkenly celebrates its six-hundredth anniversary with a funfair when an anonymous tip leads police to find a young woman brutally beaten, raped, and thrown under the floorboards of the very stage on which her attackers had just played a polka. An eight-member brass band composed of respectable family men with respectable day jobs is charged with the crime. A neophyte defense lawyer, still wet behind the ears and breaking in his attaché case, takes on the trial, only to lose his innocence in the process.
So begins Guilt, Ferdinand von Schirach’s tense, riveting collection of stories based on real crimes he has known. In these brief, succinct tales, von Schirach calls into question the nature of guilt and the toll it takes—or fails to take—on ordinary people. In "The Illuminati,” the popular mean crowd at an all-boys’ boarding school wages a vicious attack against an outsider schoolmate, and ends up accidentally killing the boy’s beloved teacher. Attempting to hurdle through a midlife crisis, a housewife begins to steal trivial things no one will miss, an act that gives her a rush and staves off depression in "Desire.” And in "Snow,” an old man whose home is used as a way station for a heroin ring agrees to protect the identity of the lead drug runner, who receives his comeuppance in due course.