Self’s Deception is an efficient but otherwise fairly prosaic crime novel from Bernhard Schlink, the German novelist who found worldwide success in 1998 with The Reader. Self’s Deception, like Self’s Punishment before it and Self’s Murder due in 2009, are translations of pre-The Reader books and their early genesis shows, as neither really fit with the glorious chaos that is modern crime fiction.

Schlink’s schtick is a Chandler-esque hero and a Chandler-esque plot transposed to a provincial Germany city. His hero, 65 year old PI Gerhard Self, is a former Nazi prosecutor who since the War has chosen to opt out of the system and pursue a low-level sleuthing career in Heidelberg. By the time we encounter Self, he is a battered, bruised and world-weary detective. However like any other Chandler-esque hero, that veneer of world-weariness barely covers a fierce moral streak and a romantic desire to set the world to rights.

So it goes in Self’s Deception during whose semi standard-issue plot the following happens: A mysterious disappearance. The mystery deepens. There is disharmony within a prominent family. There is shady governmental/corporate/judicial corruption. People are not who they appear to be. Chaos reigns. Detective gets caught in web of lies. Detective untangles web. Detective restores harmony, with enough loose ends for plausibility. World moves on. World-weary detective surveys wreckage of his life and awaits next case on which to be, once again, reluctantly noble.

Self’s Deception is not a bad book, in fact it’s pretty well written and Self is a good moth-eaten hero – but there are no great surprises beyond the regulation plot twists and turns. In the end, Self’s Deception is no more or no less than high-quality formulaic writing, worth pressing into service for long commutes, but perhaps not for savouring in a favourite chair with a glass of wine.

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