FRANK TALLIS – Vienna Blood. Random House, US, trade paperback, January 2008. Originally published by Century Books, UK, hardcover, May 2006 (shown).

   Volume Two of the Liebermann Papers, a series that began with A Death in Vienna [reviewed here ], continues the saga of the ongoing collaboration between Freudian psychologist Dr. Max Liebermann and his friend, Detective Oskar Rheinhardt in investigations that can profit from the insights afforded by the new, and not generally accepted, theories of Sigmund Freud.

   In a chilly Vienna winter, a killer is apparently randomly selecting victims, with no discernable pattern, except that many of them are prostitutes, and the savagery of the murders, accompanied by brutal mutilations, appears to have some similarities with the crimes of the infamous Jack the Ripper.

   However, Liebermann begins to see patterns that link the murders with a notorious secret society, an apparent harbinger of the Nazi party, and take him and Rheinhardt in directions that could compromise the detective’s career.

   Vienna, at the turn of the century, was a major cultural center, rich in new directions in music, art, and literature, but also with a strongly conservative social and political milieu, a potentially explosive mix that Tallis negotiates with remarkable skill. An impressive series that’s close to the top of my list of current favorites.

Editorial Comment:   If you follow the link in the first paragraph above, you’ll also see a list of the first four books in the series, all that have been published in the US so far. A fifth has been published in the UK (or soon will be), and there’s a sixth on the schedule for 2011.