At the start of my latest Swiss mystery, A Fondness for Truth, Andi Eberhart is riding her bicycle home from curling practice when she is killed in a hit-and-run. Since her death turns out to be murder, readers hoping to solve the crime will want to learn more about Andi. They may find themselves wondering, “Why curling? Does Andi play this sport for a reason, or could it just as easily have been volleyball?”
Yes, there are reasons I decided to make Andi not just a curler but the captain of her team, but before I explain why, I’d like to introduce the sport of curling. It began in Scotland, possibly in the sixteenth century, but it has only been played competitively at the Winter Olympics since 1998. Most curlers come from cold countries or ones where Scots have settled, such as Australia. Like many sports, curling has a unique vocabulary, which I’ll introduce in italics as I describe how it’s played.
Two opposing teams (rinks) of four players each—plus an alternate—compete by sliding (throwing) a 44-pound utensil (stone) down a sheet of ice to reach a target (house) at either end. A rink tries to get more stones closer to the bull’s eye (button) than its opponents can. After each throw, two players help the stone toward its goal by sweeping along its path with brooms to control its speed and curl. The captain (skip) decides the team’s strategy, advises each player how their stone should be aimed, calls instructions to the sweepers, and is responsible for throwing the last two stones at the finish of each section (end) of a game.
The fact that Andi’s team has chosen her as skip means they think she is an excellent player who radiates authority, makes good strategic decisions, communicates instructions well, stays calm, and bolsters the team’s morale. Even someone who doesn’t understand how vital a skip’s job is can assume that the captain of a sports team is liked and respected by her teammates. This is significant in Andi’s case because her teammates know she’s a lesbian, and they are straight.
Another reason I’ve introduced curling into my latest Polizei Bern book is that I live a seven-minute drive from Bern’s curling rink and know several women who curl. I—and many other Swiss old enough to have watched the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan—will never forget that at the first Games where curling was included as an official Olympic sport, Switzerland’s men’s team took home gold! Any Swiss who didn’t know much about curling before our men qualified as one of the eight competing teams caught on fast as we watched our team progress closer and closer to winning.
What makes curling especially appropriate for my police procedural is that it’s an honor sport. No referees check for fouls or forbidden behavior, which in curling means, in particular, burning a stone (touching it with your foot or broom when it’s in play), slamming a broom (smashing your broom on the ice when you lose your temper so that it’s damaged), and swearing (since players wear microphones, their comments are heard by everyone.) Curlers who break one of these rules are expected to confess, even though a burned stone will be removed from play, causing the team to be short one stone for the rest of the game. A player who slams a broom will not get a new one, which means the team will be short one sweeper. Swearing can cause players to have to remove themselves from a game.
A competitive sport in which players are supposed to call fouls on themselves and their opponents are supposed to keep quiet about them is etiquette from a bygone age. Compare it to soccer, where players roll around on the ground in imaginary pain, claiming they’ve been fouled by an opponent in the hope of their team gaining an advantage. In A Fondness for Truth, as the title suggests, Andi is a woman who approves of honesty, including about one’s own mistakes, and she tries to live accordingly. She also is outspokenly impatient with those who hurt or try to deceive others. Like most of us, she hasn’t always managed to live by her ideals, but she has tried.
If I’ve whetted your curiosity about Andi Eberhart and how her straightforwardness influences her life and death, I hope you’ll pick up A Fondness for Truth and try it.
Kim Hays, a citizen of Switzerland and the United States, has made her home in Bern for thirty-six years since marrying her Swiss husband. Before that, she lived in San Juan, Vancouver, Stockholm, Cambridge, MA, and Berkeley, CA. Kim has worked at many jobs, including factory forewoman, lecturer in sociology, and cross-cultural trainer. Pesticide, the first book in her Polizei Bern series featuring detectives Giuliana Linder and Renzo Donatelli, was published by Seventh Street Books in 2022 and was a finalist for the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award and the Falchion Award for Best Mystery. The second book in the series, Sons and Brothers, came out in 2023, and the third, A Fondness for Truth, in April 2024. William Kent Krueger has called it “an absolutely riveting mystery.”
