Friedrich Glauser (1896-1938) was a Swiss author who wrote in German. He was born in Vienna, the son auf a Swiss father and an Austrian mother. Twice expelled from school, he quit his studies early and his father had put him under tutelage. From 1921 to 1923 he served in the Foreign Legion in North Africa after which he worked as a labourer in France, Belgium and Switzerland.

Diagnosed a schizophrenic, addicted to morphine and convicted for forging prescriptions he spent a part of his later years in jails and asylums. He died 1938 on the eve of his marriage in Genua, Italy.

Glauser wrote six detective stories, five of them featuring Sergeant Jacob Studer of Bern police. The novels are modelled on the Commissaire Maigret stories by Georges Simenon, as the author freely admitted. Not the criminal case as such is the main issue but the people and the atmosphere in which they move. Both Maigret and Studer are petit-bourgeois, in both cases the whole personality does the investigation, not just the intellect and both are very different from their authors . But while the action of the Maigrets takes place mostly in Metropolitan France, Studer operates in Swiss villages, where investigations seem to be much more difficult:

Glauser had a certain success in the 1930s, one novel being even made into a film. But his rang was only fully appreciated in the 1960s. Today he is recognized as the most important Golden Age writer in the German language. After him Germany's most prestigious crime fiction award is called the Glauser prize. Thankfully the Studer novels have been translated into English recently and published by Bitter lemon press, London.

An appreciation of The Spoke by Martin Edwards can be found here

Bibliography

Thumbprint (2004) aka Wachtmeister Studer aka Schlumpf Erwin, Mord (1935)

In Matto's Realm (2005) aka Matto Regiert (1937)

Fever (2006) aka Die Fieberkurve (1938)

The Chinaman (2007) aka Der Chinese (1939)

The Spoke (2008) aka Die Speiche aka Krock & Co. (1941)