Review by New York Times Review
EVERY 16th-century savant and scholar and crackpot aspired to study in Prague under great minds like the astronomer Johannes Kepler and the court mathematician, Tycho Brahe. As a novice in the occult arts, Christian Stern, the young narrator of Benjamin Black's WOLF ON A STRING (Holt, $28), is desperate to extend his studies in that "capital of magic." But no sooner does he arrive in the city, in the winter of 1599, than he comes upon the corpse of a well-dressed woman, savagely murdered and dumped in the snow. Her grieving father warns Christian to travel on to Dresden or some other center of learning. "Prague is no place for you," he's told. "Here everything is tainted and sick." Because of his name, which, in the view of the learned if eccentric Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, marks him as a messenger sent by Christ, Christian is invited to court and is even housed in the same room once used by Dr. John Dee, a master alchemist "steeped in the mysteries of the kabbalah." There's not much magic in this tale and Christian never gets a chance to study the occult arts, but he encounters plenty of intrigue, enough to convince this naive hero that he's landed at "the center of an intricately devised, immensely subtle and cruelly malicious game." He's introduced to Turkish coffee (which hits him like "a bolt of lightning") by the papal nuncio, seduced by the emperor's concubine and charged by the emperor with finding the murderer. John Banville's novel "Kepler" was published in 1981. Now, using the pen name he has adopted for his mystery novels, he returns to this exciting era when science and superstition were battling for supremacy He even gives the emperor and Christian an opportunity to discuss the "living, harmonious continuum" that connects "the countless parts of creation." The ornate style of Christian's narrative suits both this rich historical period and the courtly language of Prague, this "city of masks and make-believe." DON WINSLOW'S New York cop novel THE FORCE (Morrow/HarperCollins, $27.99) is a scorcher, and if his sources are on the level it's time for another Knapp Commission. Winslow's charismatic hero, who is also the chief villain, is Detective First Grade Dennis John Malone, proud leader of the Manhattan North Special Task Force, which has recently made the biggest heroin bust in memory They own the city these roughnecks whose minds are deep in the gutter and whose language is as ripe as rotten fruit. But they're also crooked, having taken 50 kilos of heroin and close to $2 million in cash from that same haul. Just because these detectives are crooks doesn't mean they can't police their turf. In fact, the task force handles quotidian misdeeds like regular gentlemen, and the way Malone deflects an all-out gang war is genius. Like so much else in the story (the Christmas envelopes of cash, the payoffs to the wiseguys, even the turkey giveaway), Malone's methods are thoughtful and inventive. They just aren't entirely lawful. ST. denis, the picturesque town in the French countryside where Martin Walker sets his enchanting mysteries, is blessed, and occasionally burdened, with a history that dates back to the early cave dwellers. In THE TEMPLARS' LAST SECRET (Knopf, $25.95), an unknown woman falls to her death while scaling the cliff to Commarque, a medieval fortress that was once a stronghold of the Knights Templar. Bruno Courreges, the chief of police, learns that the last master of this very rich order was burned at the stake in Paris in 1314, and legend has it that there's buried treasure at this local landmark. Meanwhile, excavations in search of prehistoric caves continue at the base of the cliff, and a medieval mystery will gum up the works at the dig, where a Venus fertility figurine has recently been found. It's Bruno's firm belief that food is "a village policeman's secret weapon," but with so much going on, he's hard-pressed for time to cook one of his fabulous feasts. As the current owner of Commarque observes, "Sometimes I wonder if we don't have too much history here in France." if you can pass up a mystery with a bookstore in the title, you have great willpower. Personally, I couldn't resist Matthew Sullivan's MIDNIGHT AT THE BRIGHT IDEAS BOOKSTORE (Scribner, $26), an appealing first novel featuring Lydia Smith, a kindhearted Denver bookseller with a soft spot for the homeless men who haunt the aisles. (BookFrogs, she calls them, since to her they resemble Jeremy Fisher, Beatrix Potter's lanky frog.) But Lydia's favorite, a "shattered young man," hangs himself in an alcove and leaves her all his earthly possessions, including a crate of books defaced in a way that sends her a message about himself - and her own horrid history The oddball characters and layered plot make this puzzle mystery both charming and challenging. Keep an eye out for a childhood friend of Lydia's who went to their fourth-grade Halloween party in a red dress with a fake knife in her chest, declaring that she was "Annie, only stabbed." Marilyn STASIO has covered, crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 25, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor in Prague, calls his courtiers his wolves, but when he summons alchemist-scholar Christian Stern, a dissonant note (a wolf tone) sounds in the court. Stern clearly misunderstands his meteoric rise to fame as the superstitious king's right-hand man and bounds clumsily into the royal presence with painfully amusing naïveté. The action begins with the murder of Rudolf's young mistress, whom Stern is the first to discover, and nearly grows into full-scale war as players are shuffled and replaced at the hands of invisible gamesmen, about whom Stern can only guess. Benjamin Black, a pseudonym for literary novelist John Banville, also writes the Quirke mysteries, set in modern-day Ireland. In this intricate, clever, and uncomfortable historical suspense novel, he drops a flawed hero into a seventeenth-century labyrinth without a torch. Unlike Stern, readers will suspect everyone and may squirm a bit as inevitable disaster approaches. Kenneth Wishnia's historical mystery The Fifth Servant (2010) is similarly suspenseful and full of atmospheric detail, while Sara Poole also creates a courtiers' web of deceit for a wilier outsider to navigate in her Poisoner series.--Baker, Jen Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Black (The Black-Eyed Blonde) displays his mastery of yet another mystery subgenre in this brooding, atmospheric whodunit set in 16th-century Prague. Christian Stern, the bastard son of the Prince-Bishop of Regensburg, has arrived in that city in the hopes of winning the favor of Rudolf II, the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, and obtaining a place among the court's learned men, such as Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe. The first night he spends in Prague, Stern finds Magdalena Kroll-the teenage daughter of Dr. Ulrich Kroll, Rudolf's physician and "one of his chief wizards"-lying in a snowy street with her throat slit. Initially a suspect, Stern soon becomes the emperor's designated investigator. In order to discover the truth behind the murder, he must navigate a realm in which no one can be fully trusted. Superior prose (Magdalena's head rests in a pool of blood, a "black round in which the faint radiance of the heavens faintly glinted") complements the intricate plot. Black is the pen name of Man Booker Prize-winner John Banville. Agent: Ed Victor, Ed Victor Literary Agency (U.K.). (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The first night a young scholar arrives in Prague (in 1599) he becomes entangled in court intrigue and murder.Black, the pen name for Man Booker Prize-winning novelist John Banville, here impresses with his literary dexterity as he spins from hard-boiled detective fiction (Even the Dead, 2016, etc.) to a rich, expansive, if sometimes discursive, historical mystery. On Christian Stern's first night in wintry Prague, the 25-year-old scholar and alchemist stumbles across the body of a beautiful woman he guesses to be 17 or 18, "a deep gash across her throat, like a second, grotesquely gaping mouthher headresting in a pool of her own life-blood, a black round in which the faint radiance of the heavens faintly glinted." The young woman was Magdalena Kroll, daughter of Dr. Ulrich Kroll, court physician to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. Of late, Magdalena had deserted her lover, Jan Madek, to become the emperor's mistress. In this dangerous city, simply being at the site of the murder makes Stern a suspect, and soon the eccentric Rudolph calls him to court. A believer in the occult, the emperor thinks Stern is the manifestation of a dream he had in which Christ sends a savior to him to protect the throne against the Turks. Rudolph charges Stern with finding Magdalena's murderer, a task hastened by Stern's fear that if he fails, he will be executed. Shortly, Madek's body, brutally mutilated, turns up in a moat. Stern's hunch that Madek killed Magdalena and then was murdered in revenge is dashed when Dr. Stern's examination of Madek's corpse finds he was killed well before Magdalena was. Feeling inadequate to the task of solving the crimes, Stern nevertheless persists. His wit and curiosity lend style to the tale he narrates but also slow its pacethe new detective never meets an alley or a character he can't resist exploring, knowing, and expounding upon. However languorous the tale sometimes becomes, Stern moves it to a denouement that befits the treacherous times. Patient readers in no hurry will savor Black's dark, vivid mural of Prague at the turn of the 16th century. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
