Budapest Noir by Vilmos Kondor

1936. The Hungarian prime minister, Gyula Gombos, has just died. Almost the entire newspaper industry, police, and military are gearing up for the funeral and all the organizational details that will go in to honoring a beloved leader.

That includes Zsigmond Gordon. Crime reporter for The Evening, a leading newspaper in Budapest. He’s no fan of politics. Particularly now, considering what’s brewing the neighboring Italy and Germany. While he, too, has been assigned to cover various aspects of the funeral, the death of a young prostitute is more concerning on a number of levels. 

For one, in all likelihood, her death could be lost amongst all the goings on surrounding the funeral. Second, the girl is a teenager. Third, she died without a mark on her. Fourth, when asking around at the police department, he snuck a peak into a police captain’s drawer and found a professionally made naked photo of the girl. Fifth, she was Jewish. And finally, his contact at the coroner’s office tells Gordon that the girl was pregnant.

Juggling his funeral assignments with sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, Gordon personal private investigation goes from the cop who found the body, to the police higher-ups whose lack of interest goes beyond the simple bad timing what with the funeral and all, to the photographer, to the girl’s pimp, to the brothel with which she was connected, to getting severely beaten by this strange man tracking him, to the brothel’s madam - the legendary Red Margo. All of which was just to find an identity.

Doing a little digging on my own, I learned that the book was originally published in Hungarian in 2008 and translated in this 2012 edition. Also learned that author’s name is a pseudonym and that this book was made into a 2017 movie by a Hungarian film company (to mostly mediocre reviews). But the one common feature of reviews of both the book and the movie is that hard boiled noir fans will probably find things to like about either the book or the movie. My best comparison is to maybe Raymond Chandler as it seems to pay homage to that golden era of noir. Not a bad think to be linked to.

ECD