The Hangman's Daughter

Today, I finally finished reading “The Hangman’s Daughter” by Oliver Potzsch. I have been trying to finish this book for quite awhile now. It’s quite good, and the fact that it’s a translated book doesn’t show at all. The genre of this book is not immediately noticeable. It’s a murder mystery novel, with a romantic side story. I must admit, I was not at all impressed by the ending. It seemed rushed, and didn’t wrap up the side story in the least. The mystery is thoroughly explained but I had some serious problems with the story line.

Here is a plot summary: We open the story with our hangman, Jakob Kusil, apprenticing his first beheading with his father. The story is set in Bavaria in the 1600s. It gives us inside look at the kind of man Jakob will be. His father has been drunk for several days in a row in anticipation of the beheading. Everything goes wrong because Jakob cannot steady the woman who is about to die, and it is messy and painful for everyone involved. From that moment on Kusil swears that he will not be a hangman.
The next scene opens 35 years later, and Jakob has become the hangman for the town of Schongau. He has a beautiful family, and he loves his with. He has very clever children; the oldest and cleverest is Magdalena. In these old times, the people of town would shun the hangman because of his ominous job. However, the catch 22 of the story is that the duty of hangman is passed down from father to son. So, as we saw in chapter one, Jakob had no choice about his line of work. That being said he is a good hangman. He knows herbal compounds to ease or intensify the pain of his victim, and he is a better physician then the town doctor. This was often the case in executioners, and if people could not afford a doctor they would go to the hangman for their ailments.
The son of the town doctor is Simon Fronwieser, and he is Kusil’s unlikely sidekick. He is in love with Kusil’s daughter Magdalena, but due to tradition the hangman’s daughters always marry other hangmen, because no respectable family will take them. At the beginning of the story neither character knows the other is in love. Simon’s father is furious about his feelings for the hangman’s daughter, while Kusil finds it merely amusing.
Simon is there to witness when they pull the body of the first murdered child out of the river. The little boy is bloodied and dying, but still alive. His injuries are too severe and he dies just before his father gets there. They find a strange symbol on his shoulder and the town cries witchcraft.
They immediately arrest the town midwife and throw her in prison. She has regularly entertained the small boy and several other children. All of the children are orphans except for the first, who is an only son who’s mother died in childbirth.
It is Kusil’s duty to torture as well as execute people, but he knows that the midwife is not a witch and owes her a debt for the safe delivery of his children. He sets about finding who actually murdered the young boy.
Two more young boys die and we find that our culprits are four hired soldiers. The main villain is a man that the author mysteriously calls “The Devil”. The inhabitants of the town get more and more anxious to have the midwife disposed of as two more bodies are added to the list. Kusil finds that he is forced to torture the poor woman, but before he does he gives her an herbal concoction that puts her out of her mind so she won’t feel the pain. There are two more instances where he is forced to hurt the midwife until he decides to make a potion that will make her sleep for 3 days.
They find that the killer is just a mad dog, and has been paid for the murders from one of the rich merchants of the town. The last two little girls go into hiding in an underground well that the main characters spend the whole time looking for, and in the end finally find. The soldiers kidnap Magdalena, and the Devil makes a deal with Kusil. If he can lead the Devil to the children, the Devil will release his daughter, untouched. Kusil, with help from Simon, find the well and the children. The Devil follows them down and he and Kusil fight in the tunnels. Everything is wrapped up and the midwife is sent home.


Ok, so here are the main problems I had with this book. The author has no reason to keep us in the dark about who the Devil really is, because he is not a known character. The first boy to die is not an orphan, and that was what the author was using to link all the children together. The ending was rushed and not wrapped up completely. There is no reason for this book to be called “The Hangman’s Daughter”, she is a major character, but she isn’t the main character, her father is.
All in all, I rather liked this book. The storyline was interesting, and it at least kept me reading. Sure, the plot was convoluted but it was a fun read anyway. However, there are some serious issues in the story and that makes me feel like authors are getting lazy. Maybe I should chalk it up to the book being a translation, but SERIOUSLY?
In the post script the author states that the Kusils are real people that he is directly descended from and the main characters in the book are not fictional, but actual people from his family tree. The fact that he has taken his direct genealogy and turned it into a story is great. I really love books that have a sense of ethos, but that should make the story better right? In conclusion, I was greatly disappointed by the ending of this book. It is worth the read, but I highly doubt anyone will remember it in 50 years.


P.S.
I get paid on Wednesday next week. I think it’s time for some NEW BOOOOOKS!!! YAAAAAAAYYYY!! Yes, I’m a huge book nerd. I’m thinking about creating a scoring system for these books that I review. I know that I’ll be giving them up to 5, but I want something bookish like…..5 out of 5 bookworms? I dunno. I’ll work on it. :) ‘Til next time!