Master of the Day of Judgment: A Novel

Attending a recital at the home of his former mistress and her famous actor husband, Baron von Yosch is declared the suspect when the actor is murdered later that evening, and sets out to learn the truth in order to clear his name.

A casual account of an unexplained suicide interrupts a musical evening at the Bischoff villa, home of Vienna's reigning actor. As Eugene Bischoff finishes the tale, all in his small audience are skeptical except the military engineer, who immediately begins analyzing the mystery. His efforts gain urgency when moments later the actor shoots himself dead. Suspicion falls on the baron, a man of dubious character, but the engineer sets out to clear him. Chasing through 1909 Vienna, they find at every turn another baffling suicide. Only at great peril do they finally discover the fantastic impetus behind all the deaths. Though narrower in scope than other Perutz masterpieces (The Swedish Cavalier, LJ 7/93), this is a dark mystery as well crafted as any in the growing Perutz canon. Recommended for larger collections.
Paul E. Hutchison, Bellefonte, Penn.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Perutz was born in Prague, lived in Vienna and fled the Nazis to Israel, where he died in 1957. His work, which Arcade has been issuing in translation at intervals, has been admired by such writers as Ian Fleming, Graham Greene and Jorge Luis Borges. In this 1921 novel, the style is clear and brisk, the narrative technique assured, the atmosphere (pre-WWI Vienna) convincingly caught in myriad details. The narrator, Baron von Yosch, is a titled army officer who has lost his former mistress to an actor; he is with them at a chamber music soiree when the actor is mysteriously shot. Although the death looks like suicide, suspicion falls on the baron. Another member of the party resolves to solve the mystery and so, after first thinking to flee, does the baron. Other strange suicides occur during their search. The actual resolution, though highly intriguing, is less gripping than the search itself. Perutz reserves another surprise, however, throwing his macabre tale into a new light on the very last page. Imagining, if possible, a combination of the works of Conan Doyle, Dostoyevski and Kafka gives a fair idea of the tone of this weird little novel.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Although Perutz, a native of Prague, died in Austria in 1957, his writing has only recently been published in the U.S. Perutz, considered by many to be a master of literary and historical fiction, turns here to genre fare, offering a cerebral thriller. Set in 1909 Vienna and written in formal, stately, stylized prose (the manner of the time), the novel concerns the plight of Baron von Yosch, accused of the murder of actor Eugen Bischoff, whose wife was once von Yosch's mistress. Von Yosch, a guest at Bischoff's house at the time of the actor's death, is convinced that some powerful, unknown force drove the man to suicide. With the aid of two other guests who were at the house on the fateful night, von Yosch decides to investigate, thus beginning a journey that leads him to a terrifying, centuries-old secret. Perutz's writing is a study in subtle contrasts--he is playful and somber, dignified and quixotic, harsh and gentle. This gifted author weaves a spellbinding story that will enchant, mystify, and astonish his readers. An ideal choice for those who like stylish, literate mysteries. Emily Melton

Since no one at Eugen Bischoff's 1909 musical soir‚e wants to tell him that his bank has just failed and his contract as actor to the Viennese court will not be renewed, the assembled company--his wife, Dina, her brother Felix, Dr. Eduard von Gorski, the engineer Waldemar Solgrub, and Baron Gottfried von Yosch, Dina's former lover--are eager to listen to his unsettling story of an acquaintance, a young naval officer who retraced the final days of his brother, a suicidal painter, so closely that he ended up killing himself. A few minutes later Bischoff himself is dead, shot inside a locked room. Is it suicide, as the scene suggests, or has he been subtly murdered, as Felix insists, by von Yosch's news about the bank failure? Determined to clear his name, von Yosch investigates Bischoff's own recent movements, and uncovers an uncanny pattern: the suicide of a young pharmacist, the madness of one of von Yosch's former subordinates, the death (by heart failure?) of Solgrub--all linked to the awesomely powerful person the pharmacist called ``the Master of the Day of Judgment.'' The identity of the Master provides a solution that, like that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is more disturbing than the mystery itself. Another of Perutz's allegorical fables (The Swedish Cavalier, 1993, etc.), this tale, first published in 1921, manages, like Stevenson's classic, to be at once obvious, sedate, and hair- raising. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.