Deadly Communion [Hardcover]

Frank Tallis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 2010

A sexual predator is at large on the streets of Imperial Vienna. The killer is no ordinary 'lust murderer' but an entirely new phenomenon, his deviance revealing the darker preoccupations of the age. Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt appeals to his friend, psychoanalyst Dr. Max Liebermann, for assistance. But to understand the killer's behaviour, Liebermann must make a journey into uncharted regions of the human mind, tracking a monster whose modus operandi combines both exquisite precision and savage cruelty.As the investigation continues, Liebermann and Rheinhardt find themselves drawn into the worlds of art and couture, worlds in which glamorous appearances mask the most sinister of secrets...

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Century (January 7, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1846053587
• ISBN-13: 978-1846053580
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

More About the Author

Dr. Frank Tallis is a consultant clinical psychologist at the Charter Nightingale Hospital in London. He has also written How to Stop Worrying (1990) and is a trustee of Obsessive Action, a charity which helps sufferers of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and their families.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Psychiatry has its uses", August 22, 2011

By 

doc peterson (Portland, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Deadly Communion (Hardcover)

The fifth book in the Max Leiberman series has police detective Oscar Reinhardt called to investigate a series of murders of young women, Leiberman helping a patient who believes he has seen his doppelganger (according to German mythology, a harbringer of one's imepnding demise), and a mysterious narrator writing to us of his fascination with death. As the plot unravels, these three stories overlap and intertwine. The idea of a "serial killer" was still novel in the early 20th century (Jack the Ripper and H.H. Holmes notwithstanding), and the concept of "profiling" criminals was still in its infancy. Even so, Leiberman and Reinhardt gradually piece together the similarities of their respective cases to solve not two, but four murders. It is a riveting read.

The attraction of Tallis' writing isn't just the mysteries, though. He manages to capture the spirit and outlook of Vienna at the turn of the last century: in the first several books the flavors of central Europe (particularly the rich and decadent deserts), in _Deadly Communion_ it is literary as allusions to Goethe, Schiller, Schubart and Holty run through the story. In mnay respects, Tallis has his fingers on the pulse of fin-de-siecle Vienna. Early in the book he writes, "Where to begin, then? With a birth or with a death? And there it is, you see - the two, always together." This theme runs continually through the story, as Leiberman later remarks, "me - you - all of us - we Viennese. We are utterly preoccupied with sex and death. The signs of this preoccupation are everywhere: in our theaters, art galleries, opera houses, and concert halls. Consider Klimt's seductresses, or the funeral marches that director Mahler puts in his symphonies ... What begins in the bedroom progresses inexorably to the grave: prostitutes on the Graben and suicides reported daily in the newspapers ... the overblown pomp and macabre ceremony of our funerals - and syphilis, or national disease - always there to remind us of our dual obsession: sex and death."

Tallis' stories are more than a great mysteies - they allow readers to vicariously live in Vienna at its zenith. A great summer read.