A Matter of Breeding

May 12, 2014
A visit to Vienna by Bram Stoker in 1901 highlights Jones’s solid fifth whodunit featuring lawyer Karl Werthen and real-life criminologist pioneer Hanns Gross (after 2013’s The Keeper of Hands). Stoker, after being dogged for months by a stalker who follows him from England to Austria, specifically requests Werthen’s protection during his visit. The Dracula author insists on helping Werthen and Gross investigate the deaths of three young women seemingly killed by a vampire. Their first suspect is radical right-wing politician Christian von Hobarty, who employed one of the victims, Ursula Klein, as a servant. Stoker is intrigued that “Hobarty” is an anagram for Bathory, the name of a bloodthirsty 16th-century murderess. Jones tosses in a horse-breeding scandal, handled by Werthen’s capable wife, Berthe Meisner, at Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s direct request. The result is one of the series’ best at combining plot and historical background. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune Agency.

Starred review from November 14, 2011
Jones vividly evokes 1900 Vienna under the leadership of its notorious anti-Semitic mayor, Karl Lueger, in his splendid third whodunit featuring attorney Karl Werthen and criminologist Hanns Gross (after 2010’s Requiem in Vienna). Wealthy industrialist Karl Wittgenstein asks Werthen to track down his son, Hans, who manages mining operations for him and who hasn’t shown up for work in a week. Wittgenstein, who won’t admit to being worried, wants Werthen to discreetly look into his son’s whereabouts to reassure his wife. The evidence suggests that Hans has merely ditched a job he never enjoyed, but as Werthen starts asking basic questions, the lawyer comes to wonder whether Hans’s low-pressure position might be tied to rumors of municipal corruption that may have been the reason for the suicide of a councilman friendly with Lueger. Jones poses a challenging puzzle for his savvy investigator while subtly portraying the growing threat to Europe’s Jews. Agent: the John Talbot Agency.

February 1, 2012
In turn-of-the-century Vienna, the disappearance of a wealthy heir is only the beginning of a complex case of government corruption and murder. When Councilman Reinhold Steinwitz, a protege of Vienna's charismatic Mayor Karl Lueger, is found dead in his office of a gunshot wound, an apparent suicide, his friend Karl Werthen, lawyer and sometime sleuth (Requiem in Vienna, 2010, etc.), is incredulous that Reinhold, who seemed untroubled, would have taken his own life. But his melancholy is temporarily eclipsed by the news of a valuable and, given the recent birth of his daughter Frieda, much needed commission. Werthen's good friend, the artist Gustav Klimt, recommends him to his friend, wealthy Karl Wittgenstein, whose eldest son Hans has gone missing. (Hans' ten-year-old brother Luki, youngest of the large family, will become famous years later as Ludwig Wittgenstein.) Though duty-bound to search, Karl, who assumes that his son is sowing wild oats, seems indifferent to his disappearance. Werthen gains a far different picture of Hans from other members of the family and classmates, who use the perhaps coded word "artistic" to describe him. Indeed, when he finds Hans, the circumstances might be characterized as compromising. Hans' sexually ambiguous friend Henricus Praetor is the reporter who wrote a series of corruption stories about Steinwitz. When Praetor commits suicide, Werthen finds himself following a new mystery. Jones' measured, stately prose is perfectly in tune with his period setting and his hero's intense intellectual curiosity. Though sometimes he strains to shoehorn in period detail, his intricate plot unfolds with suspense and style.

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Starred review from January 1, 2012

Young lawyer Karl Werthen loves taking on private investigations, so he is eager to pursue the disappearance of a member of the illustrious Wittgenstein family. Concurrently, a Vienna councilman is found shot in his office, an apparent suicide. Working his missing-person case, Werthen interviews a gay freelance journalist who knows young Wittgenstein and, interestingly, has also been writing inflammatory articles about council activities. The missing man is soon found, but the journalist is murdered. Afraid that his interview triggered the man's death, Werthen feels morally compelled to identify the killer. But what exactly is he looking at: a sex scandal or financial greed? It is a tangled web that now ensnares Werthen, and the next murder hits too close to home. VERDICT Ultimately, this fin de siecle mystery is all very Sherlock Holmes. Populated with such real-life luminaries as artist Gustav Klimt, Jones's third historical series title (after The Empty Mirror) is an intricately plotted, gracefully written, and totally immersive read. Recommended for Stefanie Pintoff, Laurie R. King, and Philip Gooden fans.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2011
Vienna 1900. The Hapsburg Empire is crumbling, and political hopefuls scramble for power. Local powermongers, including the pre-Nazi populist mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, vie for the rights to develop the Vienna Woods, an inner-city tract that could make a fortune for a wily developer. Advocate Werthen (Requiem in Vienna, 2010) gets involved when Hans Wittgenstein goes missing at the same time as a city councilman commits suicide. Coincidence? The suicide of a flamboyant journalist follows, and Werthen relies on his old mentor, criminologist Hanns Gross, for help in solving the case. In previous series titles, Jones built tales around artist Gustav Klimt and composer Gustav Mahler, but the more subtle references this time to Lueger, a little-known anti-Semitic mayor, and to Ludwig Wittgenstein's father are less successful. The near absence of the best character in the series, Werthen's quietly brilliant wife, Bertha, will disappoint fans, who will nevertheless stick around to follow the ongoing narrative arc. Others may better enjoy the more atmospheric and compelling Barker and Llewellyn series by Will Thomas or the witty romantic suspense Fatal Waltz (2008), by Tasha Alexander.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2014
Turn-of-the-century Austria has its own homegrown Jack the Ripper, a killer with a cruelly creative streak and a disturbingly playful nature. After woodsman Johannes Schmidt finds the brutalized body of a young kitchen maid near his rural home in the province of Styria, criminologist Hanns Gross (The Keeper of Hands, 2013, etc.) is called in by the police to assist in their investigation. Gross confirms that the victim was pregnant, the child ripped from her womb. Hers is just the latest in an unsettling series of recent killings. Meanwhile, Gross' friend Karl Werthen, a lawyer, accepts the offer of provocative author Bram Stoker to help protect him while he's on a speaking tour. When the press tags the grisly murders with the headline "Vampiro!," the author of Dracula is delighted, but Gross is enraged at such stupidity. He believes the killer is targeting him and shares a taunting note that was slipped under his hotel room door. Meanwhile, in Vienna, Werthen's emancipated wife, Berthe, is engaged in some probing of her own, albeit a bit more arcane, when she suspects that a complex scheme may be afoot to corrupt the pure lineage of the famed Lipizzaner horses. Predictably, Berthe applies a feminist spin by focusing on the mares rather than the stallions. Things take a shocking turn when Gross himself is arrested for the murders. Cameos from Archduke Franz Ferdinand, playwright Arthur Schnitzler and other period notables add spice. Jones adds a delicious historic perspective to his slightly overstuffed plot, all presented with precision and panache.

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July 1, 2014

In their fifth outing (after The Keeper of Hands), attorney Karl Werthen and his colleague famed and prickly criminologist Dr. Hanns Gross confront a serial killer who targets young working-class females. Since the killings display a ritualistic style, Werthen and Gross have numerous suspects to query as they struggle to find the connection among the victims. Unfortunately, the killer has set it up so that Gross becomes a real suspect. Meanwhile, Werthen's wife, Berthe, looks into a problem involving the famed Lipizzaner horses and their lineage. Predictably, the two cases intersect. Factor in a cameo appearance by real-life author Bram Stoker, and expect vampire-related theories to be part of the mix. VERDICT While the protagonists of Jones's historical forensic series, set in 1901 Vienna, are likable, his intricate plot is Sherlockian in its posturing, minute clues, and use of heavy dialog, barely escaping becoming ponderous at times.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.