Publishers Weekly
A so-so serial killer story line mars British author Tallis's fifth novel pairing Viennese psychoanalyst Max Liebermann and Det. Insp. Oskar Rheinhardt (after 2010's Vienna Secrets). When someone drives a hatpin into the brain of a 19-year-old artist's model, Adele Zeiler, Liebermann, a colleague of Sigmund Freud, helps with the murder inquiry. Zeiler is but the first victim of a sick individual who appears to carry out his precise executions as part of a perverse sexual ritual. With the killings causing a panic in Vienna, Rheinhardt's boss is impatient for results even before the Austrian emperor expresses frustration that the crimes remain unsolved. The two companionable main characters, who share a love for music, will remind Patrick O'Brian fans of Aubrey and Maturin, but the few less-than-shocking twists aren't enough to distinguish this from the many serial killer historicals that have tried to repeat the success of Caleb Carr's The Alienist. (Apr.)
Library Journal
In this fifth Max Liebermann tale (after Vienna Secrets), set as usual in turn-of-the-century Vienna, Max's friend DI Oskar Reinhardt asks his help in solving a series of murders. Someone is killing young women by thrusting a hat pin to their skulls during sex. Max, a psychoanalyst, is already working with an institutionalized mental patient whose landlord and attractive landlady have gone missing. A third plotline involves haute couture, pornography, and murder, too. As in the earlier books, Sigmund Freud makes an appearance, as does Max's English lady friend, Amelia, who is at the forefront of medical forensics. Alternating chapters present the anonymous killer's first-person rationale. VERDICT Tallis, himself a practicing clinical psychologist and prolific author, writes with a grace and erudition that well suit his characters and their historical period in a city that is on the edge of modernity and upheaval while clinging to tradition and the familiar. Once again, psychoanalysis helps bring at least explanation of crime if not always justice. Recommended for fans of well-drawn historical mysteries.—Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Kirkus Reviews
A meticulous serial killer with medical expertise confounds turn-of-the-century Vienna's most perceptive pair of sleuths.
While psychoanalyst Max Liebermann delves into the psyche of Erstweiler, a disturbed patient convinced that he's haunted by his doppelgänger, his friend and sometime colleague Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt examines the corpse of a young woman murdered in a singular fashion: A hatpin has been inserted at the back of the neck at the precise soft spot where it can penetrate the brain. Even after Liebermann joins Rheinhardt in his investigation, his sessions with Erstweiler are woven into the story, along with a third narrative—that of the killer, who coolly and progressively describes his obsessions and activities. The victim is Adele Zeiler, a sometime artist's model who occasionally worked as a prostitute. Rheinhardt traces the unique murder weapon to the fashion house where it was purchased, gets a solid description of the killer and even a name—Griesser—but he must track down many leads and question many witnesses before he crosses the path of the murderer, who in the meantime racks up more victims. As in earlier cases, the theories of Freud, who makes a cameo appearance, are key to the killer's pathology. Liebermann continues his near-wooing of emancipated Amelia Lydgate, whom he gets a job assisting the medical examiner.
Liebermann's fifth (Vienna Secrets, 2010, etc.)once more folds a nifty mystery into a fascinating portrait of a unique time. And there's a nice surprise twist.
