Wild Boar

This intriguing debut mystery, a Swiss bestseller, pits an older, reclusive technician in a Swiss clinic against a stuffy, self-serving medical establishment. Outwardly, Gottfried Sonder seems a pathetically dull fellow on the verge of retirement. Inwardly, he's seething with primitive, raw emotions directed at a chain-smoking doctor he believes caused his lung cancer. A widely traveled, experienced hunter, Sonder decides to exact revenge and finds the perfect poison--undetectable, lethal and from the Amazon. Sonder delivers the coupe de grace with a blow pipe, and stows the body of his victim in another doctor's car. Days later, the body turns up in a river. Commissioner Haberli, an unorthodox, intuitive detective, discovers many of the secrets and peccadillos of the clinic staff as he unravels the case. Describing with relish the doctors' often reprehensible conduct, the author, a researcher and scientist, engenders sympathy for the brooding Sonder, who dreams of retiring to Africa to romantically face death, far away from the clinic's claustrophobic white walls. Suspense builds as Haberli's gathering of evidence keeps pace with Sonder's nearing date of departure. An affable, often tongue-in-cheek mystery, this novel is also an intelligent discourse on the nature of illness and a witty portrait of a medical community. (Apr.)