A Dead Man in Trieste [Hardcover]

Michael Pearce (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2004

From award-winning British author, Michael Pearce, comes the first in a new series introducing Seymour of Special Branch. Trieste in 1906 is one of Europe’s great seaports, the Austrian Empire’s main outlet to the Mediterranean and the world beyond. But various nationalist movements are threatening to pull the place apart. The heavy-handed militarist regime has trouble keeping a lid on it, the secret police are everywhere, and now the British consul has gone missing. Was this the result of an ill-advised liaison? Could he have fallen afoul of the secret police, or the even more secret revolutionaries? The Austrian police are of course investigating, but the Foreign Office would prefer this matter to be handled with sensitivity. Britain has commercial interests in the port after all, so perhaps it would be wise to send someone out—someone very special from Special Branch who is capable of speaking the relevant languages; a good officer, but not someone British. That someone should be born here, lived here, but a member of, say, an East End immigrant family from somewhere in Europe. You can never quite rely on them. A bit dubious really, but just the man for the job.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"A dead man is everyone's business." Or so the saying goes in Trieste, a politically divided city at the north end of the Adriatic Sea that, a century ago, was the Austro-Hungarian Empire's principal Mediterranean port--and now serves splendidly as the backdrop of A Dead Man in Trieste, the first installment in a new historical mystery series by Michael Pearce. It's in Trieste, in 1906, that a British consul named Lomax vanishes, spurring an investigation destined to expose an identity-falsification scandal, risk fueling nationalistic hatreds, and thrust a young sleuth into the arms of a free-spirited "fancy woman."

The detective in question is Sandor Seymour, reared by immigrant parents in London's working-class East End and now a multilingual officer with Special Branch. Dispatched to Trieste at the request of the British Foreign Office, it is Seymour's task--operating under the guise of an itinerant King's Messenger--to determine whether the eccentric Lomax left his post voluntarily, or was removed violently. Discovery of the consul's corpse, beaten and dumped into the sea, settles that question, but leaves others tantalizingly unanswered: Why had Lomax been roaming the docks on the night of his demise? With whom had he visited the cinema earlier that evening? Is his perishing somehow related to his falling out with an influential Serbian businessman? And why is Seymour suddenly being followed? Aided by a gruff Austrian inspector and a gaggle of bohemian artists, and pleasantly distracted by Lomax's model friend, Maddalena, Seymour must deal with revolutionaries, farcical "futurists," and his own family's political past as he tries to solve the consul's killing and prevent Trieste from becoming the fuse that ignites a world war.

British author Pearce, best recognized for his series featuring Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt in early 20th-century Cairo, Egypt (A Cold Touch of Ice, The Face in the Cemetery), brings to A Dead Man in Trieste his usual flair for convoluted plots, humorous characters, and deft crime-solving compromised on occasion by the vexatious demands of diplomacy. Seymour is a charming protagonist, displaced from his London beat to make sense of Trieste and, in sequels to come, resolve misdeeds at other British consulates and embassies across Europe. With the added incentive of seeing Maddalena once more--clothed or not--this series holds great promise, and the potential of introducing Pearce to a broader U.S. audience. --J. Kingston Pierce

From Publishers Weekly

British author Pearce, creator of the acclaimed Mamur Zapt historical series (The Camel of Destruction, etc.), makes the case for a larger fan base with this first in a new series, set early in the 20th century amid the growing erosion of the power of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the burgeoning Balkan conspiracies that will eventually spark WWI. The British foreign office plucks Sandor Seymour of Special Branch from Whitechapel and assigns him to surreptitiously investigate the disappearance of Lomax, the British consul in Trieste, a major seaport for the empire. Posing as a lowly king's messenger who's just passing through town, the affable and matter-of-fact sleuth quickly manages to insinuate himself into the missing man's bohemian circle of artists and revolutionaries. Those contacts soon prove invaluable when Lomax's corpse surfaces and Seymour must battle competing local police forces to solve the murder. Fans will find Seymour quite familiar, since like Gareth Owen, the hero of Pearce's Egyptian series, he is adept at mixing detection with diplomacy. Pearce again demonstrates his skill at making the past come alive and at seamlessly weaving actual political intrigues into his plot.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf (October 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786714654
• ISBN-13: 978-0786714650
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,016,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Light historical novel, July 12, 2010

By 

Srdjan Pesic (Minneapolis, Mn United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Dead Man in Trieste (Hardcover)

Michael Pearce is a man with vast and impressive knowledge of early 20th century history. Trieste, big port in northern Italy was the only connection that diminishing Austro-Hungarian Empire had with the Adriatic sea. It is no surprise that every power in 1910 wanted the piece of action. Mr. Pearce mixes numerous Balkan nations and Germans and Austrians and, of course Italians in this swift, authentic and surprisingly light historical novel. His leading character British policeman of mixed Polish and Hungarian heritage, Sandor Seymore is a perceptive and likeable hero. I am an American citizen of Serbian nationality, so this book was dear to my heart for its respectful and expert approach to this complicated time in history.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific mystery about an city unknown to many in days leading up to WWI, April 15, 2007

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Former world traveler "Now armchair traveler" (Boston MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Dead Man in Trieste (Hardcover)

This book provides a fascinating view of Trieste and some of it's inhabitants in a time leading up to WW1. As with Pearce's series set in Egypt in the same time frame, it helps to know background and the way the British government operated at the beginning of the 20th century.
Pearce has a very dry sense of humor which some people may find off putting but how else to highlight the difference between the British Establishment's haughty world views when living and working among the inhabitants of a differnt world?

14 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible Series Debut, February 16, 2005

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Dead Man in Trieste (Hardcover)

The first in a series featuring Sandor Seymour, an agent of the British Special Branch with a talent for languages, this slim work leaves a great deal to be desired. Most mystery series rise and fall on their detective, unfortunately Seymour barely makes a blip on the radar in his debut outing. We are given snippets of his East End immigrant background, and we are told he's generally so hard at work that he doesn't have time for the ladies, and he's got a knack for languages. By the end of the book we learn that he's a fair man, and got a fairly sharp mind ("for a policeman"), but that's about it... He's one of the flattest, least-developed fictional detectives I've come across!

Alas, the story that he's tossed into isn't so great either. Trieste in 1910 (it's not clear why the promo copy says 1906, it's clearly 1910) makes an excellent backdrop for fiction, one of the foremost ports in the world, it's brimming with intrigue and scoundrels from all over Europe. Pearce gives glimpses of this here and there of plazas, the canal, old coffeehouses (mostly telling, rather than showing), but it all feels as false as a painted set. There's no depth, no aura created, just a basic canvas backdrop for Seymour to operate against. His assignment is to try and find out what's happened to the British Counsel, who's gone missing. (It's not particularly convincing that some policeman would be plucked from Special Branch to investigate this just because he can get by in a few languages, the Foreign Office would have plenty of their own fluent people who would be more adept at navigating the perils of such as place.)

In any event, Seymour shows up and starts poking around. As he discovers, the city is a hotbed of high feelings, from the officious rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to the passionate Italians who want the city back, to the various Serbs, Bosnians, and Herzegovinans who have their own agendas. The counsel's disappearance is linked to all this, and over the course of the story, Seymour pieces it altogether in plodding fashion. The prose limps along weakly without any style whatsoever, and anachronistic phrases jarringly appear in descriptions of Seymour's thoughts. This is writing at its most basic, which is a shame, 'cause the basic premise of a detective running around the major cities of pre-WWI Europe is a good one. I'm fairly big fan of historically set mysteries, so I'm hoping Pearce decides to actually give Seymour some depth for his next outing (Istanbul). in the meantime, this book is best avoided unless one has some kind of keen interest in Trieste or Futurism (see below).

The one somewhat interesting element in the book is that Seymour becomes friends with a bunch of artists hanging about the plazas of Trieste. These include James Joyce (for some reason "Juice" in the story), Italo Svevo (who is called by his true first name: Ettore), and the founder of the Futurist movement, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Indeed, the climax of the novel takes place at the very first "Futurist Evening", which was a real-life event orchestrated by Marinetti. The futurists come across as a zany, madcap, fun-loving, bunch of boozehounds in the book. What readers might not know is that Futurism was hugely influential in the development of Italian fascism, and that Marinetti was a Milanese millionaire who would go on to become a supporter of the Italian invasion of Libya, an intimate of Mussolini, and Secretary of the Fascists Writers Union!