Detectiveverhaal met vooraanstaande rol voor Ludwig Wittgenstein - zowel de man als de filosoof. Sterke vrouw in de hoofdrol, dus minder stereotiep dan de Berlijnse trilogie

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I liked Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir Trilogy very much, but cannot say the same about A Philosophical Investigation. The latter is set in London in 2013 with an engaging female officer from Scotland Yard who is an expert on chasing serial killers and she has a doozy on her hands in this novel: a man who is busy bumping off men, who have been identified through a secret government program as carrying a specific brain structure that predisposes them to violence; the killer is also one of these men and believes that he is doing a service by eliminating others who might–might–one day be violent. The point of view shifts between the policewoman and the killer with the latter justifying or at least exploring his actions in terms of philosophies of life, death, existence, etc; this then develops into a dialogue between the two, complicated by the policewoman's political superiors who want to twist all this philosophical musing into an argument, to the killer, that the only logical extension of his actions is suicide. I found the philosophical interventions sometimes interesting, but more often they seemed to detract from the flow of the novel. Sometimes it felt as if the murder mystery was just a vehicle for the author's musings.
(Feb/06)