In The Judge and his Hangman (1950) Dürrenmatt's investigator takes to the stage for the first time: Inspector Bärlach, an old fossil of the judicial system. For health reasons, he has only very little time left to solve a murder case. Bärlach's approach to the issues of justice, morality, guilt and punishment is a common thread running through all of Dürrenmatt's crime novels. In Suspicion (1951), for example, the inspector fights once more against death and injustice, driven by his boundless defiance at »existing in this world and fighting for another one, a better one«. In The Pledge (1958) another investigator, Matthäi, doggedly tries to hunt down a child-murderer, showing no fear of danger or its consequences. Justice (1985) focuses on a young lawyer's entanglement in the delicate web of justice, the judicial system and morality. Dürrenmatt began his fifth (and uncompleted) crime novel The Pensioner (1995) as early as 1969, but kept re-writing it. The novel's protagonist, the ill, gluttonous Inspector Höchstettler, is the spitting image of Bärlach.