The Pledge opens Goodreads in a new tab

Set in a small town in Switzerland, The Pledge centers on the murder of a young girl and the detective who promises the victim's mother that he will find the perpetrator. After deciding the wrong man has been arrested for the crime, the detective lays a trap for the real killer, with all the patience of a master fisherman. But cruel turns of plot conspire to make him pay dearly for his pledge. One of Durrenmatt's most diabolically imagined and constructed novels, in Joel Agee's translation.