Death And The Maiden
(Vienna Blood 6)
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
The hit novels behind the major new BBC TV series Vienna Blood.
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Vienna, 1903.
An operatic diva, Ida Rosenkrantz, is found dead in her luxurious villa. It appears that she has taken an overdose of morphine, but a broken rib, discovered during autopsy, suggests other and more sinister possibilities. Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt seeks the assistance of his young friend, the psychoanalyst Dr Max Liebermann, and they begin their inquiries at Vienna's majestic opera house, where its director, Gustav Mahler, is struggling to maintain a pure artistic vision while threatened on all sides by pompous bureaucrats, vainglorious singers, and a hostile press.
When the demagogue Mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, becomes the prime suspect - with an election only months away - the Rosenkrantz case becomes politically explosive. The trail leads Rheinhardt and Liebermann, via a social climbing professor of psychiatry, to the Hofburg palace and the mysterious Lord Marshal's office - a shadowy bureau that deals ruthlessly with enemies of the ageing Emperor Franz Josef.
As the investigation proceeds, the investigators are placed in great personal danger, as corruption is exposed at the very highest levels. Meanwhile, Liebermann pursues two private obsessions: a coded message in a piece of piano music, and the alluring Englishwoman, Miss Amelia Lydgate.
Romance and high drama collide as the Habsburg Empire teeters on the edge of scandal and ruin.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A heated political rivalry between Emperor Franz Josef and Vienna's anti-Semitic mayor, Karl Lueger, serves as the intriguing backdrop for Tallis's superb sixth historical featuring Dr. Max Liebermann (after 2011's Vienna Twilight). Celebrated soprano Ida Rosenkrantz has been found dead in her rooms, possibly of a laudanum overdose, her body oddly posed in the center of a rug. An autopsy reveals that the opera singer was in fact suffocated, with enough force to fracture a rib. The sensitive investigation falls to Det. Insp. Oskar Rheinhardt, who enlists Freud prot g e Liebermann for assistance. Since Lueger, who's more popular in some circles than the emperor himself, is up for re-election, the pressure is on Rheinhardt and Liebermann to solve the murder quickly. While navigating treacherous political shoals, the psychoanalyst finds time to determine who's been sending threatening letters to composer Gustav Mahler, then the director of the Court Opera. Tallis does his usual fine job bringing turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna to life.
