When you write as many stories as Chekhov did, you’re bound to come up with a clunker now and then.
This one really goes clunk! In fact, it clunks so hard, I’ve ranked it dead last among all the stories of Anton Chekhov.
It’s a mystery story, but a modern reader (or, at least, me) sees through the mystery almost immediately.
In any case, no spoilers here. The question to be answered is this: Who murdered Mark Ivanovitch Klyauzov, “a retired cornet of the guards”? The story follows the steadfast police superintendent as he peels back the layers of the mystery, or, if you will, as he ploddingly fails to see the obvious.
Like so many other Chekhov stories of this period, “The Swedish Match” is written as an entertainment, and like so many of those stories, this one ends with a twist that, I assume, is meant to be funny. So it’s a lark, and if that’s to your taste, enjoy! Chacun à son goût!
READ THIS? READ THAT!
Chekhov wrote several mystery stories, and his only novel was a mystery that featured an innovative narrative twist (the narrator reveals himself to be the murderer) but these haven’t aged very well. To be honest, I’m not a fan of mystery stories in general, and especially of mysteries in the Arthur Conan Doyle vein featuring brilliant logicians, so it’s not surprising that I would rate Chekhov’s mysteries pretty poorly. You may feel differently. If so, another one to read alongside “The Swedish Match” is “The Examining Magistrate,” in which an icily logical doctor unravels a mysterious death in no time at all.
A Chekhov Circus 