Idealists

A chilling murder takes place in the first chapter--Squire Skjern-Svendsen, a wealthy, niggardly Danish businessman, is brutally strangled by someone who lurks in his bedroom. But this is no conventional mystery. Written at the start of World War II (the Germans occupied Denmark while Scherfig was drafting the novel), this is a deft satire of the darker side of so-called idealists and their schemes to save the world. With deadpan tone and an eye for the bizarre, Scherfig ( Stolen Spring ) leads the reader through offbeat and compelling chapters depicting a world on the brink of disaster, full of crackpot do-gooders-- like the mannot a Ph.D. per p. 31 who seeks a laboratory with an oven to produce ``Fire Salamanders . . . elementary spirits that function in fire,'' and the Jazz-Pol Party, which advocates liberation through jazz dancing (``Make your abdomen lithe and supple the way primitive peoples do! That's where you'll find release and deliverance!''). The murder finally is resolved, but not before several suspects have been wrongly charged, including a strange villager whose actual crime is stealing women's panties left hanging out to dry. With illustrations by the author. (Mar.)