Customer Reviews

Fatal Lies: A Novel (Mortalis)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the thid installment of the Lieberman papers, Vienna psychiatrist Max Lieberman again is called to assist his police detective friend, Oscar Rhinehardt solve a murder - this time at a military school. While the muder mystery itself is engrossing, the real gem here is the way in which the personal lives of Lieberman and Rhinehardt are woven into solving the crime.

That there is bullying and strong anti-immigrant (Slav and Magyar) sentiments at a military school is hardly surprising; that the headmaster tolerates said hazing is also not a surprise. This storyline, however, is almost a red-herring for a more subtle plot involving what initally appears to be an ancillary murder. As Lieberman and Rhinehardt gather clues, half-truths, deception and lies begin to unravel, each revelation resulting in another tragic death. The final resolution of the crimes had me picking through the book to find the critical clues that I missed. In many respects, Tallis' characters are reminiscent of Holmes and Watson, although the tenor here is much different.

As I have come to expect (and enjoy) in the Lieberman papers, there are abundant references to food (gugelhupf, ischer geback, and my favorite: dobos torte) as well as to music (Mendelssohn, Schuman, Brahms, Schubert - and new to me, Tartini). Given that the stories are set in early 20th century Vienna, Freud also makes the occasional appearance, as do oblique references to the fore-runner of the Rorschach test and to Freudian slips.

I recommend Tallis and this series; _Fatal Lies_ was a much more enjoyable read than the darker _Vienna Blood_.

"Fatal Lies," by Frank Tallis, is the third installment in his mystery series featuring Freudian psychiatrist Max Liebermann and his good friend, Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt. This time, the pair team up to investigate a strange death at St. Florian's, an elite military academy. One of the school's teachers finds a cadet, fifteen-year-old Thomas Zelenka, slumped over a laboratory workbench. The pathologist discovers scar tissue on the victim's body from healed wounds as well as a network of unhealed cuts, but he detects no obvious cause of death. Rheinhardt is not willing to let the matter drop. Why was Zelenka's corpse covered with gashes and why did he keel over for no apparent reason? In spite of pressure from higher-ups to close the case, Oskar stubbornly continues looking into the boy's background, habits, and close associates. He also consults Max, whose scientific knowledge and keen understanding of the human psyche have proved so helpful in the past.

Tallis fills his narrative with local color, highlighting the culture, cuisine, and political turmoil that made turn-of-the-century Vienna such an intriguing place. The author focuses on the claustrophobic atmosphere of St. Florian, a place where the stronger and more influential students viciously bully their weaker counterparts. The teachers, for the most part, turn a blind eye to this culture of cruelty and, in some ways, their perverse influence encourages the cadets' brutal behavior. Another subplot deals with Liebermann's romantic entanglements, as he juggles the two women in his life, the brilliant Amelia Lydgate and a beguiling violinist named Trezska Novak.

Unfortunately, "Fatal Lies" has a number of flaws, including an implausible and far too convoluted plot. When the tangled threads are at last unraveled, many readers will find themselves more exasperated than gratified. The dialogue is, for the most part, rather stilted, and the villains are almost all one-dimensional rogues (a student named Wolf Kiefer who has an affinity for Nietzsche lives up to his predatory name). This time, with Amelia Lydgate playing a cameo role, Max's confused love life fails to arouse much interest. The book is at its best when Tallis demonstrates Liebermann's uncanny powers of observation and his ability to rip off the façade that people use to conceal their true natures. Max mines useful information from such seemingly minor clues as slips of the tongue, body language, and conversational pauses. Using his extensive knowledge of physiology and psychology, Liebermann ruthlessly exposes the foul secrets that some of the book's characters will do anything to hide. "It is a world where nothing is as it seems and nobody can be trusted." Liebermann and Rheinhardt are an appealing pair who share a love of classical music and a passion for justice. However, even they cannot breathe life into "Fatal Lies," a novel that would have been better had it been more subtle and less overwrought.

"Fatal Lies" is author Frank Tallis' third installment of the Lieberman/Rheinhardt mystery series, and a inventive and entertaining story it is. The core of the book is the investigation of a student's death at a Viennese military school. It's soon clear that the institution fosters a lot of the most extreme kind of bullying and mistreatment that those schools were once notorious for. The classism and latent racism of the time (turn of the 20th century) are knowingly woven into the murder mystery as well as being secondary themes in the social portrait of Vienna that is skillfully built into this mystery series by author Tallis.

Protagonist Dr. Max Liebermann, the Freud-trained psychoanalyst, brings an interesting aspect to the police procedurals that are the main engine for much of this story. But in "Fatal Lies," Dr. Liebermann finds himself thrown off stride by a developing obsession with a beautiful and exotic Hungarian woman, who takes the good doctor on a sensual ride that he cannot resist but isn't wholly comfortable about.

In addition to a multi-layered murder mystery, "Fatal Lies" presents the reader with another delicious look at Vienna when it was nearing its cultural heyday. Interestingly, the focus here is more in the direction of the late 19th Century, before the full blooming and accomplishments of the Secessionist period. In any event, the reader gets a full picture of the city and the political and social backdrop of the time. Author Tallis does not stint on detailed descriptions of food and drink either. Heartening to know that some of the watering spots mentioned in this book and others in the series e.g. The Cafe Central, are still in business and flourishing without much change in menu or decor.

The Rheinhardt/Liebermann series is first rate--inventive and evocative. "Fatal Lies" is an excellent read and highly recommended.

Headmaster Julis Eichmann runs St. Florian's Military Academy near Vienna with an iron fist. However, when fifteen year old student Thomas Zelenka is found dead, Police Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt and psychotherapist Dr. Max Liebermann lead the official inquiry though the latter detests time away from Hungarian musician Trezska Novak.

On the surface, there is no evidence of a homicide though the two sleuths wonder why the victim has so many cuts and scratches all over his torso even under his armpits. Although no one cooperates, especially the headmaster, the investigators soon learn of sexual trysts between the faculty and staff with the students. Especially alarming is an alleged encounter between the dead teen and a teacher Herr Sommer as well as the pupil with the wife of the assistant headmaster. Finally they uncover a student cult dedicated to Nietzsche led by the nephew of Police Commissioner Brugel, who already loathes the use of Freudian psychology in official investigations.

Using real famous Vienna persona to anchor time and place, Frank Tallis writes a great historical mystery. The story line is fast-paced as the lead sleuths follow clues that take them into diverse directions. The whodunit is clever, but once again as with BLOOD AND DEATH IN VIENNA, it is the profound look at intellectual Vienna circa 1900 that owns the novel.

Harriet Klausner

That's a fair assessment of "Fatal Lies", the third of Frank Tallis's Rheinhardt/Liebermann novels -- at least a new 'topic' in each of its 81 snapshot chapters, ranging from Viennese waltzes to Mexican psychedelic mushrooms by way of recurrent detours into the works of Kraft-Ebbing and Lucian of Samosota, and with walk-on appearances by Sigmund Freud and Gustav Mahler! Meanwhile the book owes a little to Harry Potter and a lot to Young Torless. The plot, I'm afraid, has all the consistency of overbeaten egg whites, and Herr Doktor Liebermann's sleuthly logic is at times drawn as thin as phyllo dough. "Vienna Lies" is an hors-d'oeuvre platter of murders, suicides, and lethal accidents, but the real feast is the dessert tray of esoterica for polymath readers.

To be fair and balanced - hateful phrase! - it's hardly a great novel, not even a proper shelf-mate for "Young Torless", Robert Musil's profound depiction of boarding-school Angst. Rheinhardt the baritone cum investigator and Liebermann the pianist qua psychiatrist are already familiar from their two previous crime tales, although Rheinhardt is rather upstaged by his volunteer colleague in "Vienna Lies". After all, we get to be diverted by the good doctor's risque amours, including a bit of extra-marital intercourse fumed by absinthe! The 'broad range of topics' in "Vienna Lies" includes some 'fascinating' case studies: sexual vampirism, necrophilia, teacher-student liaisons, sadism, and even a hint of cadaverphagia. Of course, the setting IS Vienna!

This is volume 3 of the `Liebermann Papers', i.e. the detective series with the shrink Max Liebermann and the cop Oskar Rheinhardt, set in the early 20th century in Vienna. While the setting is as musical and as culturally rewarding as the first two volumes, not to forget the pastries, I am afraid that in terms of thriller value, this 3rd one is a little lacking. It is still a pleasant tour of historical environments, plus some gruesomeness, but the plot is not really gripping. Maybe such series don't carry that far? I also think that it is overloaded with references: Musil's Torless; Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, his Zarathustra, his Will to Power; Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis; Freud's Dream Interpretation; Arendt's Banality of Evil. A book of fiction can get too clever for its own good!

The novel has 2 main subjects: the murder case in a school environment, and then Max L's love confusions. Cupid was a cunning archer! After Max ditched his Austrian Jewish fiancée because he found that he had nothing to talk about with her, he is now gripped by falling- in- love attacks, first with his English ex-patient, then with a Magyar violinist. We sympathize with his problems, and are not a little envious (provided we are men), but hasn't that kind of thing been done before? Max turns out to be given to jealousy, which in turn worries him.

The crime story is about a military academy where sadistic bullying is the norm. That, again, is not an unusual thing and not particularly interesting. The main sadist seems to be a youthful Nietzsche reader who is quite convinced that he has what it takes to become an Uebermensch, a Superman as per Zarathustra. He has the will to power, he thinks. Well, that kind of thing probably did happen. It is still not all that interesting. And anyway, it turns out different from what we believe, as expected.
Tallis chose the name Eichmann for the school headmaster, and he explains that he did that deliberately, to have a link to the banality of evil.

Robert Musil, the author of the novella about Young Torless, is not mentioned in the novel. If he were, it would be an anachronism. However Tallis makes it quite clear that he took a lot of the details and the atmosphere in the school from Musil.
All in all, still a 4 star fun, but not as great as the 1st in the series and not as gripping as the 2nd.

Detective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt and young Freudian psychologist Dr. Max Liebermann team up for the third time over the death of a boy at St. Florian's, a secretive, repressive, elite school near Vienna.

It's the beginning of the 20th century and Vienna is a glittering jewel of cutting edge ideas, gorgeous, sensual music, and wonderful food, especially the rich and elaborate pastries.

St. Florian's however, is steeped in tradition, an insular place teeming with cliques and hazing rituals. The dead boy - a scholarship student, abused by a thuggish group of aristocratic boys - is marked with ritual cuts. Making little headway with his close-mouthed witnesses, Reinhardt calls in Liebermann whose Freudian ideas may provide some insight. The reader, meanwhile, has the benefit of inside knowledge - the viewpoint of Wolf, the boys' psychopathic leader, inspired by the ideas of Nietzsche.

While the mystery provides the bones of the plot, Vienna and the protagonists' lives flesh it out. It's ball season and the lush waltzes lend headiness to Liebermann's enchantment with Miss Lydgate, an intellectual English girl and former patient. However, jealousy rears its ugly head and Liebermann consoles himself with a beautiful and rather wanton Hungarian violinist who introduces him to absinthe. Other evenings ring with his and Reinhardt's companionable vocal and piano duets.

Tallis, a London clinical psychologist, has produced a witty, atmospheric and beautifully written series brimming with the enthusiasm and sophistication of new ideas for a new century, coupled with the grandeur and stateliness of old Vienna. This heady atmosphere pervades the comfortable, well-padded life of the cultured upper class, well insulated from the poorer classes and the new political ideas brewing in more radical circles.

Newcomers will be sure to seek out the earlier books, "A Death in Vienna," and "Vienna Blood," while fans will look forward to the fourth book, "Darkness Rising," to be published here next year.

As far as I know this is one of three books, so far, in a series with wonderfully drawn characters and a great look at historical Vienna as it enters the 20th century. I did not read them in order, but never the less they stand on their own very well. The mysteries and the detection techniques are unusual and earn your attention. I hope he writes more.

There are many types of psychological thrillers, but none encompass the body of knowledge which permeates this series featuring Detective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt and his friend and colleague, Max Lieberman, the psychiatrist who applies the principles of Freud, Adler, Kraft-Ebbing, et al, to their investigations. Set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, as the previous two novels in the series, the plot begins with a dead cadet at a military school.

The hint of sadism and bullying arises and Reinhardt suspects foul play. Additional complications, with hints of other motives, lead him and Lieberman to look further into the possibility of murder. The plot incorporates politics, history, music and social customs, in addition to giving insight into Lieberman as a person, torn by his affections for two women and analyzing himself as a person.

The author deliberately names the headmaster of the school Eichmann, laying the groundwork for an underlying theme, "The Banality of Evil": how ordinary people can be led to commit acts of brutality such as committed by the Nazis before and during World War II. In a short essay following the conclusion of the novel, Tallis expounds on the subject with significant understanding. As its predecessors, "Fatal Lies" is a very good read, and is highly recommended.

As always Frank Tallis doesn't disappoint, with the pastries and cafes open it is time for another mystery! This one involves the military again which i wonder is a plot throwback to the previous book but still the story is addicting. I am continuing to look forward to new tales in the Libermann series.