Death And The Maiden

Death And The Maiden

(Vienna Blood 6)

Summary

The hit novels behind the major new BBC TV series Vienna Blood.
_____


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.

Reviews

  • This sixth Viennese mystery to feature the sleuthing double-act of detective Oskar Rheinhardt and psychoanalyst Max Liebermann should satisfy Frank Tallis's old admirers and seduce new ones
    The Independent

About the author

Frank Tallis

Frank Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist. In 1999 he received a Writers' Award from the Arts Council and in 2000 he won the New London Writers' Award. Mortal Mischief was shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award in 2005 and for the prestigious Quais du Polar award in France, 2007. Vienna Blood was published in 2006 and Fatal Lies in 2007, both to great acclaim. Titles in the Liebermann series have been translated into fourteen languages.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more