The Hangman's Daughter [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

The Hangman's Daughter seems to be one of this year's buzz books. I read a few professional reviews and it really seemed like an interesting story. Historical thrillers are like catnip to me, and this one is a translation from the original German book which was written by a descendant of the book's fictionalized main character. So, my hopes were high. Unfortunately, the writing in the book was uneven enough that the overall package was not as terrific as I'd hoped.

This book tells the tale of Jakob Kuisl, a hangman with a heart in a small Bavarian town in the 1600's. Naturally, his daughter also has a role in the book, though she is not as prominent as one might expect from the title. In any event, some murders in the town result in the arrest of a midwife for witchcraft, and Jakob and some other well-meaning citizens try to solve the mystery before time runs out for the midwife. Meanwhile, the majority of the village's aldermen are uninterested in the truth and are only interested in protecting their money. The historical aspects of the story are very interesting, and the beginning of the book got off to such an excellent, riveting, and fast-paced start that I recommended it to a friend when I was about halfway through. Unfortunately, things started to slide downhill after that (if you are reading this: sorry Amanda!).

The biggest problem with the book were the 'action' scenes. After the mystery is laid out there is a lot of chasing and hiding and fighting, etc, but not enough to hold my interest. These were sections where I was skimming just to get through them. In addition, by the time the action started, I found myself not caring overly much about either the villains or the heroes in the story. In particular, he villains weren't really well characterized and started sort of blending together. It was hard to work up much of a desire to see them thwarted. I did very much like the character of Jakob. If it were up to me it would have been all about the hangman, not about his daughter.

In summary, this book had a great premise and an excellent, compelling start. Unfortunately the second half of the book did not live up to the first. Bottom line: I think the book has been over-rated. However, if I'd only read the first half I'd be raving about it, too.

I am reviewing from the Advance Reader's Copy Uncorrected Proof.

This English edition of "The Hangman's Daughter" is Lee Chadeayne's translation of "Die Henkerstochter", by Oliver Potzsch. (There's an umlaut over the "o", but I don't know how to make that!) The mystery's last chapter is titled "A Kind of Postscript", where Potzsch describes how he is a descendent of the real-life Kuisl executioner family. He uses the names of a real forebear for his protagonist, Jakob Kuisl, the offical town hangman, and Jakob's immediate family. Though Potzsch has researched the life and times of a Bavarian hangman and the town he lives in, this particular storyline, murder and other characters are fictional.

This is very interesting stuff. As is made clear in the novel, executioners were necessary for carrying out legal death sentences, but they and their families were shunned outcasts. They pretty much married only within other executioner families. In addition, executioners were the torturers back when a confession through torture was the legal method of determining guilt. Humans have unlimited ability to rationalize anything. So a suspect is tortured until she confesses to the crime. She is not guilty until she confesses. The torture continues until she confesses, after which she is put to death, or until she dies from the torture without confessing. The moral of the story is, don't make anyone mad enough to blame you for something.

This segues into Inquisitional torture. It wasn't just the church that held trials for accused witches. Anybody could claim injury from a witch, and the secular authorities held their own trials for witchcraft. This is certainly what happened in the 1692 Salem Witch Trials.*

And this is what happens in "The Hangman's Daughter". A midwife is accused of witchcraft and murder. Jakob Kuisl must legally torture her for the politically expedient guilty verdict the village council desires. However, Jakob doesn't believe she's guilty, and takes it upon himself to find the real murderer. The mystery takes place in Schongau, a village in 1659 Bavaria (there was no German state yet). I'm not sure when Bavaria outlawed legal torture, but I'll take Potzsch's word for it that it survived in Bavaria to this time.

I liked the characters in this book. Actions and reactions ring true, even if they are sometimes over the top. You have the super-practical Jakob who still has to get drunk the night before an execution. His daughter, cut from the same cloth. Simon, son of the local quack, who can't get any respect because he's into new-fangled medicine instead of bloodletting and purging. The court clerk, intelligent, but willing to cut any corner to avoid a scene in his town. The village burgomasters, running the gamut from young & idealistic to old & drunk.

I'm rating "The Hangman's Daughter" four stars for the plotting and characterization and five stars for the historical interest. It is a long book and can get just a bit wordy. This does not have the pace of a thriller. Incidentally, don't let the occupation of Jakob Kuisl worry you. There is no graphic violence or even graphic language.

* Though the accused in Salem were mistreated before sentencing, only one was technically tortured. Eighty-year old Giles Corey refused to enter a plea, as a protest against the court's mania. In an effort to force a plea, the court ordered that stones be piled on his chest until he couldn't breathe. It took him two days to die and he never entered a plea.

The sensory-descriptive writing of Oliver Potzsch takes one back in history to that place in time near the end of the Renaissance and before the Enlightenment where beliefs in witches empowered by the devil were still strongly held in the Bavarian town of Schongau. His startling prologue about the gory execution of Elisabeth Clement in October 1624 by Jakob Kuisl's father, the town executioner, sets the stage for the novel's main story thirty-five years later involving Jakob as the new executioner, his daughter Magdalena, and her love interest Simon Fronwieser, the town's physician's son. The witch trials and executions of numerous women from years ago have cooled down, but the recent death of a child bearing a witch's mark threatens to revive them. Since the child and some of his comrades who turn up missing were with the midwife Martha Stechlin, she is arrested and held in the town's keep to be tortured by Kuisl for a confession. Martha assisted Kuisl's wife in the birth of Jakob's own children. He, his daughter, and Simon believe she is innocent and act as detectives to find the true murderer with the hope of saving Martha from execution.

One of the elements that makes this novel so moving is that Kuisl doesn't enjoy torturing and killing innocent people. He has a conscience. He also believes in God, although he finds God more in the beauties of nature than in mankind. Nonetheless, he inherited the job from his father who inherited it from his father. It is just a job, and when he tortures innocent people, including Martha, he realizes that if he didn't do it, someone else would. His affection for Martha, even assisting her to endure the suffering he inflicts, is unforgettable. It is also interesting that he has the same interest in herbs and natural medicine (including alchemy) as the midwife. In fact, he also shares this interest with Simon who, unlike his father who is old school, seeks the benefits of newer advances in medicine and comes to the hangman's house to read books from his private library which include works by Paracelsus and a book titled "Surgical Armory" by Johannes Scultetus, the city physician of Ulm, which "was so new that probably not even the University of Ingolstadt had acquired it yet".

Other interesting aspects of the story involve a shadow-lurking, scarred character with a hand of bone known as "the devil" as well as a treasure hunt. One is also introduced to political figures such as Johann Lechner, the court clerk, whose desire to sacrifice the "witch" for the good of the community will rub many readers the wrong way, although it contributes to the tension of the novel. If one is wondering about the novel's title, one will have to read the story to find out why Potzsch chose it, although some may read it and still wonder why the author chose this title since Magdalena's role may seem minor compared to that of Jakob Kuisl and Simon Fronweiser. Personally, I believe the title is a good one (and that she plays a critical role). Again, I want to emphasize that the author is a master wordsmith when it comes to setting the mood of time and place. Not only the social dynamic with its beliefs about certain professions (including the belief that a respectable doctor shouldn't court or marry a hangman's daughter), but also the physical surroundings - including the practice of dumping the contents of chamber pots in the streets - is described very well. Although I read an advance reader's uncorrected proof copy, I plan to purchase the final publication when it comes out.