Vienna, 1909. When the celebrated actor Eugen Bischoff is found dead in his garden pavilion, suspicion falls immediately on Baron von Yosch, a well-to-do army officer who was once the lover of the dead man's wife. By all appearances-the door was locked from the inside when the two shots rang out-the actor took his own life, but someone, or something, drove him to it. The baron sets out to learn all he can about the actor's death in order to clear his name. Meanwhile, within a few days, similar apparent suicides are reported. What started out as a straightforward quest to establish Bischoff 's last deeds and discover the truth of his death becomes a search through the ages for an invisible enemy identified only by the actor's dying breath, when he whispered: "...the Day of Judgment." Leo Perutz combines his hallmark blend of suspense and the fantastic in this spine-tingling mystery.
Imagine Stephen King in Freud's Vienna writing a mystery that delves back in history and looks forward to the blood-red trumpets of the apocalypse.About the AuthorLeo Perutz is the author of eleven novels that attracted the admiration of such writers as Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, Italo Calvino, and Jorge Luis Borges. He was born in Prague in 1882 and lived in Vienna until the Nazi Anschluss, when he fled to Palestine. He returned to Austria in the fifties and died in 1957.
ReviewsBrilliant. The New York Times Book Review A master of old-fashioned suspense stories in the grand pageturning tradition. The Boston Globe
Book InformationISBN 9781611458428
Author Leo PerutzFormat Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Arcade PublishingPublisher Skyhorse Publishing
Weight(grams) 215g
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 140mm * 12mm