Death and the Maiden by Frank Tallis

This is the most recent in the series of novels about the team of Detective Oskar Reinhardt and Dr. Max Liebermann. The setting is pre-WWI Vienna and the series is somewhat like the work of Jonathan Kellerman who, in contemporary Los Angeles, also writes crime novels and pairs a child psychologist and a police detective. Published in 2012, Death and the Maiden is the fifth of the crime novel series that I’ve reported on in MRB and while this book has not been recognized with the same awards for mystery fiction as his earlier books, this one may be the best yet. Admittedly, I’m somewhat of Vienna-phile, especially for this specific era, the very end of the Hapsburg reign that lasted for 700 years. The book centers on the apparent suicide/murder of Ida Rosenkrantz, the principal soprano at the Court Opera that is run by Director Gustav Mahler. Despite her enormous talent and beauty, Ida was an insecure woman who slept with some very powerful men, including the infamous Handsome Karl Lueger, the Mayor of Vienna. Author Tallis skillfully takes us through the mystery of this murder as well as the politics in the Security Office and the Palace where Emperor Franz Joseph runs the empire but is at odds with the Mayor of his own city.

Tallis writes about the intrigues arising from the artistic personalities at the opera house, including the soprano who was displaced by Rosenkrantz's superior talent. He takes us through very believable encounters with the emperor, the mayor, and Sigmund Freud. Meanwhile, pressure is building in the city as anti-Semitism advances, an election approaches, and assassinations in Serbia are occurring. The author also carries forward from prior books with the romance of Dr. Liebermann and Amelia Lydgate. Tallis notes the awkwardness of this building relationship between a doctor and a woman who was once his patient. Nicely paralleling the primary crime, the author also takes us through the solving of an old crime, the murder of a composure that was always thought to have been a suicide.

This is an excellent story about characters that I care about. The bad news is that this appears to be the last one in the series. The good news is that I’ve discovered one that I missed, so there’s still another Tallis book in my near future. Like Tallis’ other books, this one gets my strongest recommendation.