The End of the World in Breslau: An Inspector Mock Investigation (Melville International Crime) - Hardcover

Krajewski, Marek

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1612191770 ISBN 13: 9781612191775

Publisher: Melville House, 2013

Synopsis

The second installment in the darkly intelligent series that The Independent called “As noir as they get.”

1927, Breslau, Poland: Two elaborate and sadistic murders are discovered within days of each other. The body of an unknown musician, bound and gagged, is found behind a false wall in a shoemaker’s workshop. The victim had been sealed in alive. Elsewhere in the city, the horrifically mutilated body of a locksmith is found. Next to each victim is a torn-out calendar page, with the day of the death marked in blood. Nothing else seems to connect the cases.

It falls to Criminal Councillor Eberhard Mock to solve the case, the mystery taking him still further into the Breslau underworld he knows only too well. Meanwhile, his hard-drinking nocturnal habits soon threaten his volatile marriage, and prompt some strange behavior from his wife ... and before long, Mock and his team will be investigating not only two of the grisliest murders in the city’s history, but the councillor’s own wife.

About this title

About the Author

MAREK KRAJEWSKI was born in Wroclaw (formerly Breslau), Poland, on September 4, 1966. He is the author of five novels in the Breslau series, which have been translated into fourteen languages and won Poland’s top literary and crime prizes. Krajewski is a former lecturer in Classical Studies at the University of Wroclaw.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* As winter 1927 sets in, Criminal Counsellor Eberhard Mock, Breslau’s most celebrated cop, is under great stress. His beautiful, willful, capricious 24-year-old wife, Sophie, is failing to conceive a child. Fully as willful and self-absorbed as Sophie, the middle-aged cop is drinking prodigiously, buying his wife expensive gifts he can’t afford, flying into violent rages, and having Sophie followed. Two bizarre and savage murders, connected only by calendar pages that note the day of each murder, and Sophie’s angry flight to Berlin threaten to send Mock off an emotional cliff. Death in Breslau (2012) showcased the city as a roiling kettle of wealth, privilege, poverty, crime, scholarship, and depravity. This time, Krajewski focuses brilliantly on Mock’s psychological dissolution, but he also continues to offer fascinating glimpses of the city during a brief period of relative economic stability and sociocultural foment. Eating vast quantities of heavy food preoccupies most of the characters. Spiritualism is represented by a self-described Russian nobleman who lectures on the end of the world and a new messiah, born to a “Babylonian whore.” Cocaine use is widespread. Fraternal organizations and lodges figure in the tale. Marlene Dietrich is the toast of Berlin, and Breslau has its own Josephine Baker imitator, who performs sans clothes, in black paint. Like Death in Breslau, this one is also bizarre and insightful. --Thomas Gaughan

About this edition

• Publisher: Melville House
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1612191770
• ISBN 13: 9781612191775
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304