Starred review from November 14, 2011
Jones vividly evokes 1900 Vienna under the leadership of its notorious anti-Semitic mayor, Karl Lueger, in his splendid third whodunit featuring attorney Karl Werthen and criminologist Hanns Gross (after 2010’s Requiem in Vienna). Wealthy industrialist Karl Wittgenstein asks Werthen to track down his son, Hans, who manages mining operations for him and who hasn’t shown up for work in a week. Wittgenstein, who won’t admit to being worried, wants Werthen to discreetly look into his son’s whereabouts to reassure his wife. The evidence suggests that Hans has merely ditched a job he never enjoyed, but as Werthen starts asking basic questions, the lawyer comes to wonder whether Hans’s low-pressure position might be tied to rumors of municipal corruption that may have been the reason for the suicide of a councilman friendly with Lueger. Jones poses a challenging puzzle for his savvy investigator while subtly portraying the growing threat to Europe’s Jews. Agent: the John Talbot Agency.
February 1, 2012
In turn-of-the-century Vienna, the disappearance of a wealthy heir is only the beginning of a complex case of government corruption and murder. When Councilman Reinhold Steinwitz, a protege of Vienna's charismatic Mayor Karl Lueger, is found dead in his office of a gunshot wound, an apparent suicide, his friend Karl Werthen, lawyer and sometime sleuth (Requiem in Vienna, 2010, etc.), is incredulous that Reinhold, who seemed untroubled, would have taken his own life. But his melancholy is temporarily eclipsed by the news of a valuable and, given the recent birth of his daughter Frieda, much needed commission. Werthen's good friend, the artist Gustav Klimt, recommends him to his friend, wealthy Karl Wittgenstein, whose eldest son Hans has gone missing. (Hans' ten-year-old brother Luki, youngest of the large family, will become famous years later as Ludwig Wittgenstein.) Though duty-bound to search, Karl, who assumes that his son is sowing wild oats, seems indifferent to his disappearance. Werthen gains a far different picture of Hans from other members of the family and classmates, who use the perhaps coded word "artistic" to describe him. Indeed, when he finds Hans, the circumstances might be characterized as compromising. Hans' sexually ambiguous friend Henricus Praetor is the reporter who wrote a series of corruption stories about Steinwitz. When Praetor commits suicide, Werthen finds himself following a new mystery. Jones' measured, stately prose is perfectly in tune with his period setting and his hero's intense intellectual curiosity. Though sometimes he strains to shoehorn in period detail, his intricate plot unfolds with suspense and style.
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Starred review from January 1, 2012
Young lawyer Karl Werthen loves taking on private investigations, so he is eager to pursue the disappearance of a member of the illustrious Wittgenstein family. Concurrently, a Vienna councilman is found shot in his office, an apparent suicide. Working his missing-person case, Werthen interviews a gay freelance journalist who knows young Wittgenstein and, interestingly, has also been writing inflammatory articles about council activities. The missing man is soon found, but the journalist is murdered. Afraid that his interview triggered the man's death, Werthen feels morally compelled to identify the killer. But what exactly is he looking at: a sex scandal or financial greed? It is a tangled web that now ensnares Werthen, and the next murder hits too close to home. VERDICT Ultimately, this fin de siecle mystery is all very Sherlock Holmes. Populated with such real-life luminaries as artist Gustav Klimt, Jones's third historical series title (after The Empty Mirror) is an intricately plotted, gracefully written, and totally immersive read. Recommended for Stefanie Pintoff, Laurie R. King, and Philip Gooden fans.
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
December 1, 2011
Vienna 1900. The Hapsburg Empire is crumbling, and political hopefuls scramble for power. Local powermongers, including the pre-Nazi populist mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, vie for the rights to develop the Vienna Woods, an inner-city tract that could make a fortune for a wily developer. Advocate Werthen (Requiem in Vienna, 2010) gets involved when Hans Wittgenstein goes missing at the same time as a city councilman commits suicide. Coincidence? The suicide of a flamboyant journalist follows, and Werthen relies on his old mentor, criminologist Hanns Gross, for help in solving the case. In previous series titles, Jones built tales around artist Gustav Klimt and composer Gustav Mahler, but the more subtle references this time to Lueger, a little-known anti-Semitic mayor, and to Ludwig Wittgenstein's father are less successful. The near absence of the best character in the series, Werthen's quietly brilliant wife, Bertha, will disappoint fans, who will nevertheless stick around to follow the ongoing narrative arc. Others may better enjoy the more atmospheric and compelling Barker and Llewellyn series by Will Thomas or the witty romantic suspense Fatal Waltz (2008), by Tasha Alexander.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)
April 29, 2013
Rayne continues to mix eerie hauntings and witty protagonists in her enjoyable third neogothic mystery (after The Sin Eater) starring widowed antiques dealer Nell West and her paramour, university professor and children’s book author Michael Flint. When Nell is asked by the West family to evaluate isolated Stilter House, she and her young daughter, Beth, discover mysterious piano noises and a sordid history. Nell’s late husband, Brad, spent much of his youth at Stilter House, and may have encountered the supernatural while he was there. Meanwhile, Michael gets a phone call from one of Brad’s relatives suggesting that something is wrong, and he follows Nell to the country. Documents and letters about the possibly deranged builder Samuel Burlap, who was involved with the West family in the early 1900s, drive a good part of the novel. Rayne continues to update the classic haunted house story in ways that are faithful to the genre’s roots while centering the action on a contemporary couple whose growth ably moves the series forward.