From Publishers Weekly
Steinhauer's original and mesmerizing first mystery, 2002's The Bridge of Sighs, was set in 1949, in an unnamed East European country. Now it's 1956, and the homicide detective who starred in that first book-the young, hopeful Emil Brod-has become a dour and pragmatic secondary character as the promise of the immediate postwar years fades. Steinhauer focuses instead on another police officer, the looming Ferenc Kolyeszar, a huge man who wears on each finger a ring with a grisly history. Ferenc is a talented novelist, though his sole published book so far exists only as a tattered paperback. But the confession of the title is in fact the subject of his next book-a jarring and pessimistic work about the fate of artists, indeed of all human beings, in the Soviet-haunted satellite countries, where work camps in the 1950s rival those of the Stalinist Soviet Union. Haunted by his wife's infidelities and driven perversely into his own, Ferenc falls afoul of a smiling KGB agent named Kaminski who has been assigned to his office. Investigating several past and present murders, Ferenc digs a hole for himself that is both believable and inevitable. Bigger in scope and slower-moving than The Bridge of Sighs, with deaths and deceptions snowballing grotesquely, the novel makes readers wonder just what Steinhauer will do for the next book in his series-and how far into the future it will take his team of citizen cops.
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* In 1956 Khrushchev denounces Stalinism. Amid the heady optimism of short-lived strikes and protests, a general amnesty for political prisoners is declared, and old injustices are roused as vengeful retributions. Down at People's Militia Headquarters, Inspector Ferenc Kolyeszar is faced with an apparent suicide, the missing wife of a prominent Party member, a charred and brutalized corpse, and the watchful eyes of a newly arrived official from Moscow. Then there's the imminent collapse of his marriage: an old friend and fellow officer appears to be cuckolding him, while Ferenc nurses some latent obsessions of his own, sexual and otherwise. The story of a troubled homicide detective wrestling with internal and external demons is hardly new, but seldom is it presented with such depth and personal intensity. Beyond delivering an involving police procedural in an intriguing setting, the author relates with spare irony his narrator's psychological journey through the vexatious complexities of marriage and totalitarian life, drawn toward the deceptive clarity of brutal action. This second installment in a loosely linked series (following last year's
Bridge of Sighs) is enthusiastically recommended for fans of well-made hard-boiled and noir fiction.
David WrightCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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