FRANK TALLIS –

    ● Fatal Lies. Random House, US, softcover, February, 2009. Century, UK, hardcover, January 2008; Arrow, UK, pbbk, August 2008.
    ● Vienna Secrets. Random House, US, softcover, February, 2010. Century, UK, hardcover, April 2009, as Darkness Rising.

   The third and fourth installments in the Max Liebermann series which take place in early 20th-century Vienna maintain the high standards set by the first two.

   In Fatal Lies, Dr. Liebermann and his homicide colleague, Detective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt, investigate what first appears to be an accidental death in a laboratory at St. Florian’s, an elite military academy.

   Max is somewhat distracted by a flirtation with a visiting Hungarian violinist but both the amorous relationship and the investigation of the suspicious death of the young student soon begin to expose unsuspected dark undercurrents.

   Vienna Secrets returns to the kind of bizarre crimes that characterized the first two Vienna novels. A series of murders in which the victims’ heads are violently torn from their bodies exposes, once again, the festering political and social climate that pits right-wing zealots, fueled, by anti-Semitism. against the more liberal artistic and intellectual community, with Max, largely indifferent to his Jewish heritage, finding himself shaken by events that put his indifference to the test.

   I might add that all the Liebermann “papers” (as they are referred to on the title pages of the four books) should be approached with caution by readers with a weakness for culinary pleasures. The characters eat frequently, and well, and the descriptions, particularly of the famous Viennese pastries, are mouth-watering. Murder is only one of the arts celebrated in the pages of this sumptuous series.

Previously reviewed by Walter:

    1.   A Death in Vienna
    2.   Vienna Blood