Customer Reviews

Vienna Blood (Liebermann Papers 2)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Vienna Blood: Volume Two of the Lieberman Papers" is set in the freezing winter of 1902. Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt is summoned to the zoo to investigate the slaying of a thirty-foot long anaconda named Hildegard. An unknown assailant knocked the keeper unconscious and sliced the snake into three segments with his saber. This bizarre crime soon fades into the background when Oskar and his assistant, Herr Haussmann, are called to the scene of a terrible atrocity. Four women have been slaughtered in a brothel and three were viciously mutilated. For some time now, Inspector Rheinhardt has involved his close friend, Dr. Maxim Liebermann, a practitioner of Freudian psychology, in his inquiries. Max's role is analogous to today's profiler; he has an uncanny gift for applying his knowledge of psychoanalysis to the workings of the criminal mind. More murders follow, and Oskar once again teams up with Max to resolve a troubling and complex case that has the police baffled.

Although he has a satisfying medical practice, Max is not without his personal problems. He is engaged to the lovely but shallow Clara Weiss, a woman who attracts him physically but bores him intellectually. Can a successful marriage be based on lust alone? He is also guilt-ridden by his secret interest in Amelia Lydgate, a British woman who is studying medicine at the Anatomical Institute. She is beautiful and brilliant, a perfect match for the intellectual Liebermann. As Oskar and Max proceed with their investigation into the aforementioned massacre, they ask Amelia to analyze microscopic fibers and blood, using the limited technology available at the time.

All of this occurs against the backdrop of a cosmopolitan and scenic city that harbors ugly secrets. One of them is an organization, "Primal Fire," consisting of bigots who subscribe to a nationalist Pan-German agenda and would love to do away with Slavs, Jews, Catholics, Freemasons, and other non-Aryans who might pollute pure Teutonic bloodlines. The group is led by Baron Gustav von Triebanbach and includes a mediocre and frustrated artist named Andreas Olbricht, a misogynistic doctor, Erich Foch, and an aspiring young composer, Hermann Aschenbrandt. They all admire Richard Wagner and defer to Guido List, who has written works filled with racial and religious hatred. What connection, if any, exists between List's acolytes and the aforementioned homicides? Oskar, Max, and company will need all their powers of observation and analysis to capture a lunatic who is both devious and deadly.

Frank Tallis's vivid description of the atmosphere, language, and culture of Vienna at the turn of the century is fascinating and masterful. He skillfully incorporates historical figures such as Sigmund Freud into the narrative, and he cleverly uses the ideas of psychology, evolution, medicine, and forensics in his well-constructed plot. The characters are nicely drawn: Max is a principled and intelligent individual who fears that he is about to enter into an ill-advised marriage; Rheinhardt's job is causing him great stress, since his superior, the irascible Commissioner Brügel, constantly pressures him to make a quick arrest. Oskar and Max relax in each other's company over drinks and pastries in Vienna's cafés and they enjoy frequent musical evenings during which Max, who plays the piano, accompanies Oskar, who has a fine baritone. The villains range from a handsome soldier, Lieutenant Ruprecht Hefner, who is overly fond of womanizing and dueling, to the many purveyors of intolerance who are planning to take Austria back from its alleged infiltrators. One can readily understand how Hitler, who was familiar with List's writings, came up with the ideas that he later used to mesmerize an entire nation. My sole quibble with "Vienna Blood" is that, at five-hundred pages, it goes on a bit too long. It could have been trimmed with no loss of excitement, suspense, and coherence. Nevertheless, this is an engrossing, informative, and entertaining mystery in which Tallis tackles some compelling themes: the power of the unconscious to influence our actions, the roots of anti-Semitism in Austria, and the terrible decay that often underlies apparently refined civilizations.

If you read A DEATH IN VIENNA by Frank Tallis, you will be pleased to know that 1) VIENNA BLOOD is a sequel to that gripping work and 2) it is worth the wait. If you did not read A DEATH IN VIENNA --- Tallis's introduction to Dr. Max Liebermann and Detective Oskar Rheinhardt, set in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century --- I would recommend doing so before undertaking VIENNA BLOOD, given that the latter flows from the former, and majestically so. It will increase your appreciation of the new offering dramatically.

VIENNA BLOOD is set in 1902, and finds the personal and professional relationship between Liebermann and Rheinhardt intact. While A DEATH IN VIENNA focused on a lock-room murder, VIENNA BLOOD concerns Liebermann's investigation into a series of particularly brutal killings that are tangentially linked, though the victims appear to be unrelated. While Tallis's investigative pair possesses some minor similarities to Conan Doyle's archetypal Holmes and Watson, Liebermann and Rheinhardt are on much more equal footing intellectually. Indeed, it is through Rheinhardt's intervention that Liebermann's talents as a psychiatric expert are brought into the mix, even as there is a tacit and subtle, though friendly, one-upsmanship that informs their investigations.

However, it is not Liebermann's medical skills that provide the turning point in Rheinhardt's investigation. Rather, it is an event in his personal life, one that not only puts the team on the road toward solving the case but also begins the resolution of a problem of Liebermann's own creation.

As with A DEATH IN VIENNA, there are a number of suspects of equal possibility, yet the truly magnificent and riveting elements of VIENNA BLOOD dip and swirl around Vienna itself. Tallis brings the time and place alive, down to the last nuance, yet without sacrificing plot or characterization. The return of a number of supporting characters (including a couple of unexpected ones) introduced in A DEATH IN VIENNA serves not only to provide continuity but also fodder, apparently, for future volumes.

VIENNA BLOOD more than sustains the momentum created by Tallis's first Vienna novel, even as it makes the potential wait for a third installment all the more excruciating. Jump on this beautiful ride now while the journey is just beginning.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

In the winter of 1902, Vienna Police Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt is working on the high profile case of who slaughtered the royal anaconda at the Tiergarten Zoo when his superiors yank him off that investigation. Instead he is assigned to lead the inquiry into who is killing prostitutes; as several victims have suddenly been found in the frozen city streets. The killer leaves brazen cross-like marks on his victims that lead Oskar to believe one clever diabolical person is responsible.

He knows he needs special help on this strange case witch as far as he knows has no local precedent although there is some experience in London of an apparent mentally sick yet brilliant predator. He asks Freudian adherent Dr. Max Liebermann, who collaborated with him on A DEATH IN VIENNA, to provide him insight into the culprit's mind so that they can put together a pattern and find the killer. Max realizes that the serial homicides ties into Mozart's classic The Magic Flute, but why and who remains unknown as more hookers are killed.

Readers will believe they are visiting Freud's Vienna at an exciting time in the city even if the Empire is tottering on the brink of extinction as Frank Tallis through the actions of his serial killer and the collaborative team bring the turn of the century to life. Although the police procedural is fun to follow with its link to Mozart even if it is somewhat obvious to the reader, this prime plot actually enhances the vivid look at the still thriving capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1902 as historical fans will fully treasure the tour though paved with blood.

Harriet Klausner

Following the monumental debut novel, A Death in Vienna, the author has followed up with a second book of equal proportions. He brings back psychiatrist Dr. Max Liebermann and Inspector Oscar Rheinhardt as they face a formidable serial killer who leaves strange symbolic signs in what appears to be random murders.

The novel takes place at the turn of the century in Vienna and is filled with hints of the onset of Nazism and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its culinary tastes. Sigmund Freud plays a minor--but crucial-- role in providing Max with psychiatric insights into the meaning of the killer's psyche. The combined talents of the police inspector and the psychiatrist again fortify each other's efforts to discover the identity of the savage murderer.

The depth of the descriptions of Viennese society and the city are magnificent. The plot is overwhelming and supplies a penetrating look into Max's personality and ethics. It is a great novel.

Dateline Vienna 1902, location - the sprawling majestic Schönnbrunn Palace's Tiergarten Zoo. Detective Oskar Reinhardt is called to the scene of a grisly slaying - the cruel killing of a 30 foot long anaconda that has been cut into three sections with a saber. But even such an unprecedented bizarre case must fade into the background when Reinhardt is faced with the brutal maniacal slaying of a brothel's madam and two prostitutes. Reinhardt and his close friend, Dr Max Liebermann, a respected practitioner of Freudian psychology, are convinced that the murders, with a strong resemblance to the recent Whitechapel Jack the Ripper executions, are the work of a demented serial killer who will soon be looking for a fourth victim.

"Vienna Blood" is a superbly crafted historical mystery built around a compellingly recreated Vienna. Rheinhardt is portrayed as an early believer in the infant science of forensics and profiling. But, even in turn of the century Vienna, like his modern counterparts, he is faced with internal political pressures. He is being harried to stick to solid, established techniques of dogged police work and to produce a quick arrest.

"Vienna Blood" is a magnificent travelogue of what is arguably one of the most beautiful and exciting cities in Europe and the classical music capital of the world - the Opera House under the leadership of Gustav Mahler, the cafés, the scrumptious calorie laden Mozart and Sacher tortes, the Ringstrasse, the birth of the electric tram system, the magnificent art gallery in the Belvedere; the entertaining natural history collection in the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the extraordinary outdoors beauty of the Vienna Woods on the western fringe of the city.

"Vienna Blood" is also a frightening political commentary. Dealing with the disturbing prevalence of secret societies in Vienna in the early twentieth century, Tallis makes a convincing argument that faults Vienna's "Law on Associations" with driving subversive political groups underground and making them even more dangerous. Tallis shows how the sinister Guido von List - a successful journalist and writer, much loved at the time by hardcore Teutonic Germans obsessed with superiority of the Aryan race and preserving the purity of German bloodlines - was likely the seed that sprouted into the National Socialist movement and their anti-Semitic policies.

Finally, "Vienna Blood" is a wonderful story of the cultural and social milieu of the city. Reinhardt, who is engaged to the vapid but sexually enticing Clara Weiss, realizes that he simply cannot in good conscience marry her because he does not love her. He struggles with the difficulty and the social embarrassment of breaking off the engagement as he realizes he is growing fond of Amelia Lydgate who is studying medicine at the Anatomical Institute. In a most interesting side plot, Amelia is forced to deal with the chauvinistic (nay, misogynistic) attitudes towards women, the clearly inferior sex, who would presume to test their hands at the male professions of art, science and medicine.

When I was in Vienna on vacation last week, I visited a local English language bookstore - Shakespeare & Co - and asked the proprietor to recommend a novel that was not a tour guide but that would represent the city of Vienna well and serve as a memorable souvenir. Five stars for Tallis and "Vienna Blood" and five stars to the lady that made such a superb recommendation. Thank you very much!

Paul Weiss

Vienna Blood is the sequel to Death In Vienna. The beginning presents an intriguing case that is tossed at the reader like a scattered deck of cards and over a course of many pages, begins to form a well-played hand. Reminiscent of a Sherlock Holmes detective story, Vienna Blood is packed full of historical detail and delivers an intelligent and well-written mystery. Tallis draws on case comparisons to Jack the Ripper when tracking a serial killer. Also, other fascinating historical persons directly interact with main characters including Freud. This story is refreshingly cliché free, which can be a rare experience in crime stories.

Some readers may find the mystery rather slow-moving. In addition, a great many characters are presented and can be quite difficult to keep straight. This is further complicated by the references made to other fictional characters. Without the knowledge of the references, the `hint's' or expected conclusions may be lost on the reader. It takes some effort to understand which characters are important to remember and which ones are named for scenic purposes, or really weren't necessary to name in the first place because they end up being insignificant. To fully enjoy the story, the reader may have to pause to look up plays, songs, operas and poems. This was a difficult novel to rate because the research and writing is a 4 star quality, but I simply did not find the book enjoyable. I chalk this up to my personal taste and not due to the author's talent and therefore, have given it two ratings.

I have an embarrassing suspicion that this novel was published particularly to be sold to me. That may seem like megalomania. Certainly the economics of printing and distributing a novel for a single reader would be discouraging. But ...

The novel is set in Vienna just prior to World War I. I'm quite familiar with Vienna. I recognize every crime site in the book. I've tasted every pastry. I'm familiar with all the writers and painters mentioned in passing. And I'm very fond of slivovitz.

The main character in the novel is Max Liebermann -- not the Berlin Impressionist painter, but rather a fictional Jewish psychologist, a student of Freud. My wife is a Jewish psychologist, though some years too young to be a Freudian. Dr. Liebermann is a competent amateur musician, as is Inspector Rheinhardt, his close friend and collaborator in the solution of mysteries. Liebermann has a marked preference for Mozart over Wagner, and for the values of the Enlightenment over 19th C Romanticism. He's a man of my own kidney, so to speak. He finds the Enlightenment symbolism of Mozart's "Magic Flute" enduringly profound, as do I. The opera "The Magic Flute" is performed (in several senses) during the novel; the stage performance is conducted by Gustav Mahler! and I wish I'd been there. Gustav is my man! When the text refers to melodies from that opera, hummed or whistled in the oddest places, I can sing the same notes and words from memory. The friendship of Liebermann and Rheinhardt, by the way, reminds me of the "Aubrey-Maturin" relationship at the core of the delightful sea-going novels by Patrick O'Brien, all of which I've read. There's a cross-pollination involved, I think.

Along with the allusions to music that occur on nearly every page, there's an ample stock of lore about Germanic/Norse pre-Christian mythology, with references to runic alphabets, to the Norse sagas and the Eddas of Snorri Sturlason ... all of which I've long been interested in, initially because of my Swedish origins. This lore, however, is scrambled up with nonsense, fraud, and nationalism, of the ugliest 'promise' for the course of 20th C German history. There's an ominous retrospective embedded in this 'pop' fiction, an insight into the bizarre mindset from which Nazism drew its imagery and its appeal.

Then there's Evil. In "Vienna Blood" the evilest of Evils is generated by the racism and zenophobia of fanatical ideologists. Seems true to me.

Sooo... how many readers could the Author Frank Tallis have expected to combine music, especially 18th C music, historical psychology, fascination with Vienna, a distaste for Wagnerian Romanticism, membership in a Masonic Order, love of Mahler, familiarity with Aubrey-Maturin, a burning hatred of racism in any form, and an inveterate suspicion that ideologies are the root of all evil? Like hey, Frankie? You must have had me in mind!

How could it not be entertaining to read a novel crafted especially to comp all your likes and dislikes?

Honestly, "Vienna Blood" is just an entertainment. Diverting genre fiction. The 'writing' isn't particularly original or artful. The character portrayal isn't wholly convincing or subtle. There are some gaping holes in the plot development -- lacunae as obvious as the contradictions in a Tea Party manifesto -- especially moments when Liebermann or Rheinhardt leaps to discoveries as virtuosically as Sherlock Holmes but then in the next chapter fails to interpret a clue far more obvious. There are no doubt more tightly constructed plots in dozens of other crime genre novels. It's the wealth of sophisticated allusion in "Vienna Blood" that kept me turning pages.

Wiener Blut: what an appropriate title for this entertaining crime novel full of gore and music. By mistake I started my encounter with the Liebermann/Rheinhardt crime novel series with this volume 2 rather than the previous Death in Vienna. The series teams up a Freudian psychoanalyst (from the infancy stage of the school) and a police detective who tries to work scientifically at a time when science was making huge progress, but few of the technologies that we know from CSI were available. The story is set in Vienna in 1902, the book was published in England in 2006. The author is a clinical psychologist.

Another movement in its infancy is an Aryan secret society using the swastika as their symbol. Much of the information that the book gives us about these proto-Nazis seems to be based on historical fact. There is a real life ideologist (Guido List) in the story, from whose writings we can trace lines to Mein Kampf. It seems to be proven that the Fuehrer was part of this subculture while he was a young man in Vienna. H.S.Chamberlain also shows up in the book, another `intellectual' ancestor.

Our heroes Liebermann and Rheinhardt are amateur musicians who team up not only in work but also in relaxation. Much of the socializing and politicizing happens in a Wagner society, where right-wingers meet respectably. City politics play into the plot: will we have another Mozart memorial? We attend a Magic Flute staging, with Mahler, who was the city's music director, conducting. Most protagonists of the story have some kind of relation to or interest in music. I think the book will be enjoyed by certain Italian heretics.
(Amusingly, a pianist named Eibenschuetz shows up - I have just yesterday explained the word in my review of J. Roth's novel Measures and Weights.)

The plot is driven by a gruesome series of murders, which seem somehow to be related to the Magic Flute libretto, including the slaying of the giant snake. All a little too contrived for my taste. Another aspect that disturbs me a little is Liebermann's unconvincing Sherlock Holmes behavior. Despite these irritations, the book is fun.

It is early 20th century Vienna, a place of great culture and enlightenment, but also darkness and a very real sense of foreboding for what is to come in the decades to follow. Frank Tallis captures all this so well. His heroes are Max Liebermann, a largely assimilated Jewish psychiatrist and acolyte of Sigmund Freud, and his non-Jewish investigative partner and best friend, Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt of the Vienna Security Office. They often work informally together. The plot concerns the separate murders of a huge anaconda in the zoo and a Jack-the-Ripper type slaying of a brothel madam and three prostitutes, a Czech emigre and others. Do these lead to a pattern and what is it? Additionally we learn of deadly dueling to resolve insults, real or imagined, the various Pan-Germanic xenophobic nationality organizations (precursors to the Nazis)and the super-secretive Masons. Also we get a bit of the family life of the upper middle-class Jewish Viennese households(plus a romantic involvement). And a talented and a most attractive English lady scientist helps out.

All of it is coherent, moves quickly, is exceptionally well-written (get out you dictionary if you care to know new words) and is constantly interesting. For those with a culinary liking, the descriptions of the Viennese main dishes and particularly desserts are positively mouthwatering. As an added bonus, you further learn about the art of the period and, of course, Mozart, whose music plays a role. Great story, great fun -- don't miss. I loved it!

While I enjoy Tallis' ability to capture Vienese society at the turn-of-the-century, in _Vienna Blood_ he also shows us a more seedy side of this world-class city: its virulent anti-Semitism. As much as I love central Europe, I tend to forget (or to be more honest, overlook) the anti-Semitism that is such a part and parcel of the region's history. Tallis, to his credit, does not.

Psychiatrist Max Lieberman is once again asked by his friend and associate police detective Oskar Rhinehardt to help solve seemingly unrelated crimes: the mutilation of an anaconda and a triple murder in a brothel. As the story unravels, so too is the urbane and sophisticated veneer of Vienna, its seedy and ugly core exposed to the light. The intolerance of Vienese society does not end with its Jews, however - the political repression of the Habsburgs is also shown in their repression of Freemansonry and the filthy living conditions of its (largely non-German) working class is also exposed. This is quite a departure for Tallis, and it made me a bit uncomfortable.

_Vienna Blood_ has the mainstays that I associate with his writing: the ubiquitous references to the foods, coffee and smells of the Stadtring, and the interplay of music (from which the book gets its title, incidentally) between Lieberman and Rhinehardt. So to, does Tallis show the pseudo-science common to medicine at that time: most notably the idea that women were intellecutally inferior to men, but also discussing the theories of Lombroso - that certain individuals have distinguishing features, and that these features have accompanying traits: the "beady eyes" of a criminal, for example. These pseudo-scientific theories are obliqely related to the plot, as the xenophobic prejustices of the antagonists, thier mysogyny and anti-semtism are all intertwined. While the antagonist is evil, to give them so many repugnant characteristics was a bit overdone, I thought.

Yet Tallis is honest - in the previous books in the Lieberman papers, he has shown the beauty and sophistication of Vienna - it is only fair to show how "the other half" lives as well. The mystery itself held my interest, but comparitively speaking, its not his best work. In the spirit of honesty, however, perhaps my less than enthusiastic review may be a function of my distatste for the ugliness of the era. Still, a worthwhile read.