Caso e responsabilità tra Sicilia e Svizzera: Sciascia, Dürrenmatt, Glauser

Detective novel since its origins manifested itself as a diagram with three basic characterizing features: one or more crimes, a detective and a final solution. It is a sort of logical reasoning developed as a novel. The crime breaks the social order which is then restored through an accurate investigation. Therefore, in this literary genre, the reader feels comfortably reassured by an ancient ethics and metaphysics which consider Justice as the only means to evaluate reality. Thus, we are into a scheme made of preconceived rules, where nobody and nothing can interfere with the detective’s precise investigation, not even Chance itself.But, in the history of detective novel, there has been a moment when some writers changed their attitude towards this genre; they created a new kind of novel that in some way denies the peculiarities of traditional detective novel. As Petronio said, we can define this group of detective novels as “problematic”. Glauser, Dürrenmatt and Sciascia, used a very popular genre with new intentions. This new literary genre includes a paradox in its features, in fact while a detective novel is supposed to refuse the notion of Chance, its “problematic” examples include the uncanny power of Chance in their texts.This work aims at analyzing the relationship between the role of the detective, the notion of Chance and his undertaking of responsability through a chronological selection of authors and novels.