Review by New York Times Review
For all the acts of cruelty committed between its covers, Sara Paretsky's BLEEDING KANSAS (Putnam, $25.95) might as well have been a crime novel requiring the services of her series sleuth, V.I. Warshawski. Set in the rural Kaw River Valley, where the author grew up, and sparked by a feud between two families that pioneered this farm region during the 1850s, the multigenerational narrative bristles with the kind of prickly social issues that give substance to Paretsky's detective stories. But the pointed absence of her Chicago private eye may indicate that some of the social conflicts currently polarizing the American heartland can't be resolved in the fair-and-square manner of genre tradition. The blood-boiling issue in "Bleeding Kansas" is religious intolerance. Bigotry comes naturally to the members of the Schapen clan, who worship at the Salvation Through the Blood of Jesus Full Bible Church and become apoplectic when Gina Haring, a New York lesbian and New Age Wiccan, moves into an old farmhouse and attempts to practice her beliefs. When they aren't harassing Gina as a "sodomite," Myra Schapen and her belligerent brood are railing against the "communist" notion of a co-op farmers' market and hatching plots to undermine their neighbors, the Grelliers, whose more tolerant ways just plain get under their skin. Any inclination on the part of the reader to sympathize with the Schapens (for being born and bred stupid) in this barnyard feud are wiped out when Chip Grellier, who joins the Army after being suspended from school for a fight started by his Schapen tormentors, is killed in Iraq. But the Schapens do provide much black humor by breeding the "perfect red heifer" referred to in the Old Testament, creating an international storm that ensnares both fundamentalist Christians and ultraorthodox Jews. Paretsky takes care to ground her story in the regional history of Kansas, where battles over slavery were fought to the death in the 1850s and neighbor turned against neighbor more than a century later over issues like racism, women's rights and Vietnam. Kansas, Paretsky suggests, is no freak offspring in our union of states. Rather, it's a microcosm of a nation at war with itself. Frank Tallis returns to the glory days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in VIENNA BLOOD (Random House, paper, $15), when fin de siècle Europe looked to the glittering Hapsburg capital for the latest advances in science, philosophy and the arts. In this fine sequel to "A Death in Vienna," the cafes, concert houses and lecture halls are still bustling with creative energy. But rumblings of anti-Semitism are growing louder, and the suppression of secret societies like the Freemasons has only led to the proliferation of all manner of underground groups, subversive and otherwise. "There was something about this city," Tallis explains, "that attracted intrigue, conspiracy and sedition." Forbidden public assembly, some groups, like the Psychological Society that convenes weekly at the home of Sigmund Freud, simply hold their meetings in private. But one cabal with a sinister agenda of Germanic supremacy has given purpose to a serial killer whose terrible handiwork leads Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt to consult with his friend, the psychologist Max Liebermann, on a clinical profile of the murderer. The professional rapport and easy friendship of this duo lend a bit of quiet charm to a series that, rather like a Viennese pastry, is stuffed almost to bursting with showy delights. John Turner, the deep-thinking sheriff's deputy in James Sallis's SALT RIVER (Walker, $21.95), comes by his existential melancholy honorably, through circumstances narrated in the two previous books in this haunting series. While there are crimes to be solved in the backwater town outside Memphis where Turner once thought he could shake the big-city blues - for one thing, his best friend is wanted for murder - they mostly resolve themselves. This leaves Turner free to adopt a philosophy for sustaining himself through his losses: "Sometimes you just have to see how much music you can make with what you have left." Sallis writes poetic rings around the subject, brooding on a grasshopper that takes off "with a thrill of wings" even as he lets an old man explain how he manages to keep faith with a town that has lost every last one of its Democrats. And with all the bad weather in this book, it's good to know that the last storm is a cleansing one. "In York Station, the gas lamps were all lit." With that discreet opening sentence, Andrew Martin draws readers of THE LOST LUGGAGE PORTER (Harvest/Harcourt, paper, $14) into the romance, mystery and danger of the railroad age. It's 1906 and Jim Stringer, the young engine man who came by his exciting job in "The Necropolis Railway" (and lost it in "The Blackpool Highflyer"), has just been hired as a detective by the North Eastern Railway Police. While the work is not nearly as satisfying as stoking the fires of the great steam engines, it does put him in their vicinity. And once Jim goes undercover, joining a gang of murderous thieves that's plundering the yard, he is able to look into the darkest corners of York's vast railway station. But no matter how deeply Jim plunges into the poverty and filth of England's industrial age, he never loses his sense of wonder at the monstrous beauty of its great machines. Sara Paretsky's latest novel bristles with prickly social issues, but V.I. Warshawski is nowhere to be seen.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Tallis offers another installment in his intelligent, challenging, masterfully crafted series set in turn-of-the-century Vienna and featuring Freudian disciple Dr. Max Liebermann. In this outing, Liebermann's policeman friend, Rheinhardt, asks the doctor to help solve one of the most brutal and bloody crimes in Viennese history. The case begins on a bizarre note an anaconda at the Vienna Zoo is found dead, cut into three pieces and arranged in its cage in an almost ritualistic manner. But, then, four prostitutes are slaughtered and mutilated, and the killer scrawls a mysterious, crosslike symbol on the wall of the murder site in the victims' blood. This is quickly followed by the brutal murder of a Czech national. It appears that the victims were all killed with the same weapon, but that's the only commonality. Despite Dr. Liebermann's attempts to analyze the killer's mind-set, he can find no clues to his motive, rationale, or choice of victims. It's only when Liebermann and Rheinhardt discover links to Vienna's mysterious secret societies and to a deadly mission fueled by racial prejudice and hatred that they begin to move toward a solution. Early-nineteenth-century literature, art, music, politics, and medicine provide a vivid backdrop to Tallis' enthralling, unusual, intelligently written literary thriller. A superb book for mystery buffs, history lovers, and connoisseurs of European culture.--Melton, Emily Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
British clinical psychologist Tallis follows his superior debut, A Death in Vienna (2007), with this gripping sequel. Viennese Det. Insp. Oskar Rheinhardt, already faced with finding the person who butchered the emperor's favorite anaconda, comes under even more pressure from his superiors when several murders are committed in quick succession. The inspector enlists the assistance of insightful Freud disciple Max Liebermann, who quickly deduces that the killer is choosing his victims to correspond with the plot of Mozart's The Magic Flute. The book's strength lies in the relationship and interplay between the two detectives, whose friendship, which includes a shared love of music, may remind some of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin. The clever plotting and quality writing elevate this above most other historicals, even if the solution to the crimes comes as no great surprise. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An alarmingly prolific serial killer terrorizes turn-of-the-century Vienna. Police inspector Oskar Rheinhardt is called to a modest house in the rundown Spittelberg district where a madam and three young prostitutes have been brutally murdered. The only definite clue is an enigmatic symbol scrawled on a wall. (It takes Sigmund Freud himself, chapters later, to identify it as a swastika, from the Sanskrit.) As in previous cases, Rheinhardt consults brilliant psychotherapist Max Liebermann, a classically trained pianist who also provides the accompaniment for Rheinhardt's singing on their musical evenings. Because the weapon appears to be a saber, Rheinhardt begins with the questioning of a swaggering company of military officers. Amelia Lydgate, a feminist doctor with a knowledge of advanced forensic techniques, helps with blood analysis. Liebermann, recently engaged to the beautiful Clara, finds himself inconveniently attracted to the vibrant physician. Two more murders, of a Czech street vendor and the Nubian servant to an influential professor, confirm the presence of a serial killer but bring Rheinhardt no closer to his identity. Could he be connected to Vienna's recent upsurge of xenophobia, or to the bizarre zoo killing of boa constrictor Hildegard, the emperor's favorite snake, ritualistically cut into three pieces? In this intricate sequel to the award-winning A Death in Vienna (2006), Tallis uses his knowledge of medicine, music, psychology and history to create an endlessly fascinating portrait of 1902 Vienna. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
