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Death and the Maiden by Frank Tallis — book cover

Death and the Maiden

by Frank Tallis
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Overview

Frank Tallis, acclaimed author of the Edgar Award–nominated Vienna Secrets, returns with a new and masterfully woven tale full of deceit, love, and rich mystery. Set in fin de siècle Vienna, it’s perfect for fans of Boris Akunin, Alan Furst, and David Liss.
 
Ida Rosenkranz is top diva at the Vienna Opera, but she’s gone silent for good after an apparent laudanum overdose. Learning of her professional rivalries and her scandalous affairs with older men, Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt and Dr. Max Liebermann suspect foul play instead. Their investigation leads them into dark and dangerous conflicts with Gustav Mahler, the opera’s imperious director, who is himself the target of a poison pen campaign, and Karl Lueger, Vienna’s powerful and anti-Semitic mayor. As the peril escalates, Rheinhardt grows further into his role as family man, while Liebermann finds himself at odds with his inamorata, Amelia, who’s loosening both her corset and her tongue in the new feminist movement.
 
PRAISE FOR FRANK TALLIS’S VIENNA THRILLERS
 
“[A] captivating historical series.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“[A] riveting read . . . with well researched and wonderfully imagined period detail.”—The Guardian (U.K.), on Vienna Twilight
 
“Chock-full of tantalizing elements.”—The Austin Chronicle, on Vienna Secrets
 
“Engrossing . . . immensely satisfying.”—The Boston Globe, on Fatal Lies

Synopsis

Frank Tallis, acclaimed author of the Edgar Award–nominated Vienna Secrets, returns with a new and masterfully woven tale full of deceit, love, and rich mystery. Set in fin de siècle Vienna, it’s perfect for fans of Boris Akunin, Alan Furst, and David Liss.
 
Ida Rosenkranz is top diva at the Vienna Opera, but she’s gone silent for good after an apparent laudanum overdose. Learning of her professional rivalries and her scandalous affairs with older men, Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt and Dr. Max Liebermann suspect foul play instead. Their investigation leads them into dark and dangerous conflicts with Gustav Mahler, the opera’s imperious director, who is himself the target of a poison pen campaign, and Karl Lueger, Vienna’s powerful and anti-Semitic mayor. As the peril escalates, Rheinhardt grows further into his role as family man, while Liebermann finds himself at odds with his inamorata, Amelia, who’s loosening both her corset and her tongue in the new feminist movement.
 
PRAISE FOR FRANK TALLIS’S VIENNA THRILLERS
 
“[A] captivating historical series.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“[A] riveting read . . . with well researched and wonderfully imagined period detail.”—The Guardian (U.K.), on Vienna Twilight
 
“Chock-full of tantalizing elements.”—The Austin Chronicle, on Vienna Secrets
 
“Engrossing . . . immensely satisfying.”—The Boston Globe, on Fatal Lies

About the Author, Frank Tallis

Frank Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist. He has written self-help manuals, non-fiction for the general reader, academic textbooks, more than thirty academic papers in international journals, and seven previous novels. Between 1999 and 2011 he received or was shortlisted for numerous awards, including the New London Writers Award, the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the prix des letrices de Elle, and an Edgar. His critically acclaimed Liebermann series has been translated into fourteen languages and optioned for television.

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Editorials

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 protégée 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. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Associates. (Oct.)

Library Journal

It's 1903 in Vienna. The Austro-Hungarian empire is showing cracks, anti-Semitism is rising, the powerful mayor is campaigning, and DI Oskar Rheinhardt has a suspicious death on his hands. Ida Rosenkrantz, a beautiful rising star of the Court Opera, appears to have committed suicide, but Rheinhardt, with the assistance of his psychiatrist friend Max Liebermann, finds murder, political intrigue, and official cover-up. A second apparent suicide occurs, plus Liebermann suspects foul play in the 40-year-old death of a young composer. VERDICT The sixth entry in the Liebermann series (after Vienna Twilight) is a solid entry in what has become an impressive portrayal of a culture and period in which new ideas clash with tradition and the very world order seems shaky. Freud and Gustav Mahler appear, but the strong plot and well-drawn characters of Max and Oskar, combined with erudite, graceful writing, give these tales much more than just historical appeal. In the end, Liebermann faces major life changes while readers await the next installment in this fine series.—Roland C. Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Kirkus Reviews

When DI Oskar Rheinhardt investigates the suspicious death of an opera diva in early-20th-century Vienna, he finds a nest of vipers and a closet full of skeletons. Tensions simmer at an elegant gathering that includes the Emperor Franz Josef, Prince Rudolph Liechtenstein, Mayor Lueger and members of the Court Opera, led by Gustav Mahler. The soprano Arianne Amsel attracts many admirers, and the mayor's apparent health is a disappointment to the emperor and his retinue. Not long after, a famed soprano, not Amsel, is found dead under suspicious circumstances. The victim, Ida Rosenkrantz, who recently supplanted a bitter Amsel as the opera's foremost soprano, ingested a deadly quantity of laudanum, leading to a possible verdict of suicide. But she also has a cracked rib and, outside of some recent idiosyncratic behavior, no apparent reason to kill herself. Rheinhardt consults his friend, the progressive Viennese psychoanalyst and Freud-protégé Max Liebermann, and even takes him along when he questions witnesses. When not working the case, the duo enjoys making music together. Mahler confirms the jealousy of other singers at Rosenkrantz's success, which becomes a motif of the investigation, confirmed by her dresser, Felix, and by Amsel herself. A gardener links the victim to the mayor, and the reader is privy to connections with the prince and the emperor as well. But the biggest early development is the discovery that Rosenkrantz may have secretly had an abortion. Liebermann and Rheinhardt's sixth collaboration (Vienna Twilight, 2011, etc.) again paints an intricately detailed portrait of the city in its time as well as a satisfyingly layered murder puzzle.

Book Details

Published
October 2, 2012
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Pages
384
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780812983340

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