This was a book that was very much enhanced by reading it while I was in Vienna!
It starts off in a really beautiful way: you’re in a plane leaving London approaching Zürich where there’s a change of planes before heading to Vienna (glamour of 1950s air travel). You really “enter “ the narrative through the city’s geography and the eyes of our detective.
And there’s a certain allure of glamour and danger to Vienna in the 1950s as the city has only recently been put back together again as part of an independent Austria. The book very much harks back to an aristocratic past, as well as recent post-war events.
The story revolves around the English-speaking community in Vienna and their relationship to others, and you get a lot of interesting cast members from across the city’s diverse community.
The book is written in a wonderful way; you’re immersed in the city: you build a connection to the streets and neighbourhoods that enhances the reading. The weather, the sights, the smells, the characters of Vienna are all captured.
The premise is that a CID from Scotland Yard is on holiday, and slowly he gets mixed up in a bad business involving a murder on a stormy afternoon. It seems like the plane’s passengers are implicated, or perhaps in danger? Why do people keep getting hurt in this nice Viennese neighbourhood?
Tbh, there’s less interest in the actual mystery, which gets repetitive. The world of impoverished aristocratic Vienna is captured really well, and the mystery has great tableaux moments, but the actual outcome isnt’t something that you really care about.
This is good book very much enhanced by the setting and its human geography. It’s a fairly quick and easy entertaining read, but one that suffers from being maybe a little bit baggy.
I do really appreciate these British Library Classic Crime editions for bringing lesser-known crime authors to the fore, and I think it’s definitely worth picking this up if you see this around.
Read if you want a murder caper in a beautiful city.
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