Even today, Dürrenmatt's "Justice" is regarded as a work in the tradition of his crime novels from the 1950s, although the author explicitly resisted this classification. An analysis of the gangster character reveals that the novel presents a fundamentally altered theme, indicating that "Justice" is not a crime novel but a philosophical work that addresses the issues of belief and power. In this way, "Justice" fits into the still underappreciated, monumental body of work known as Stoffe-Zeit, where the author turns away from idea-centered thinking and practices a system-critical analytical approach. What Friedrich Dürrenmatt refers to as "philosophical" are paradoxical parables that critically question the order patterns of the bourgeois crime novel.