conclusion. Criticism of detective fiction At the novella's end, Dürrenmatt offers to the reader an implicit acknowledgment of the existence of the Es geschah am hellichten Tag version of Matthäi's story, by having Dr. H. explicitly mention that the tale of Matthäi would make a perfectly suitable entry into the genre of detective fiction, if only the ending were changed such that the killer arrived for his appointment with Annemarie and fell into Matthäi's trap. However, Dr. H.'s point in relating the story is to demonstrate to the first-person narrator the folly of such fiction. The first of Dr. H.'s two main complaints about typical detective fiction is the idea that the criminal is always caught. He regards this as a relatively minor transgression, however, as even the most naive of readers would be aware that in real life, sometimes a crime is not solved. But the greater problem, to Dr. H.'s way of thinking, is the manner in which the solving of a crime is depicted in detective fiction. In such literature, the task of solving a crime is presented in a way that makes it akin to that of solving a mathematical equation. A properly formed equation can always be solved if enough of its variables can be computed and if the mathematician possesses enough skill to handle the equation's complexity. Detective fiction often depicts crime-solving in a similar light. Thus, a naïve reader of such fiction might well conclude that, even in real life, if a detective fails to solve a crime, it is either because the perpetrator executed the crime well enough to avoid leaving the necessary clues—like an equation for which not enough variables could be computed — or because the detective was not clever enough to properly locate, assemble and analyze those clues to determine what had occurred—like a mathematician who lacks the skill to handle the complexity of the equation with which he is presented. In mentioning the idea of an alternative ending to Matthäi's story, Dr. H. is noting that with such an ending the story would (and, in Es geschah am hellichten Tag, did) follow precisely the mathematical equation presentation typical of standard detective fiction. However, given the actual ending as related by Dr. H., Matthäi's failure to solve the crime arose solely because of an automobile accident — a completely random twist of fate that had nothing to do with