Superintendent Robert McDonald of Scotland Yard, hero of
over forty cases at this point, is flying abroad on a well-
earned holiday. This reissue of a classic era detective
novel will provide him with MURDER IN VIENNA.
To many readers, post-war Vienna is familiar from the
Graham Greene film The Third Man, with its ominous
shadows, drunken camera angles and zither music as an
academic is followed around the criminal underworld looking
for his friend Harry Lime. This account stays much more on
the right side of society. I suggest that the author E.C.R.
Lorac enjoyed a stay with friends, and set out to replicate
her experience in this tale.
McDonald takes us through his flight from Britain to
Zurich, boarding another plane after chatting with some
fellow-passengers, and arriving at Vienna. Descriptions of
the Danube, the cityβs palace, gardens and opera house
are sumptuous. McDonaldβs hosts are Austrian, an
elderly couple whose son is going to be arriving shortly.
Nearby, lives a British diplomat in retirement, who has
summoned a secretary, Miss Elizabeth Le Vendre, from England
to write his dictated memoir. A retired opera artiste has
also taken up residence in the city. Two men are titled Sir,
and one busy journalist is rushing round following everyone
who is anyone. The 1950s donβt seem to have had much
tourist activity or nightlife, apart from bars where only
men drank. Women frequented the coffee houses. Well, one
suspicious accident follows another, and the whole vacation
from crime goes down the drain. Β
The crime scenes are each quite separate and distinct,
but the crimes have similarities. Did someone fall down
stairs or were they pushed? I find a great deal of
repetition, as person after person recalls exactly who was
sitting where on the plane, what they said to anyone, what
each person wore, and where they had seen anyone since. I
would have liked to meet more of the local people, though we
do learn that the two world wars had led to a decline and
near-starvation for the citizens.
A warning β any book about Vienna, I read it hoping
to glimpse the dancing white Lipizzaner stallions. Not as
much as a whinny. The horses had been evacuated under the
protection of American forces and returned to the Riding
School in 1955, a year before this murder mystery was
written. I would have thought the return would merit at
least a mention. MURDER IN VIENNA by E.C.R. Lorac is filled
with German place names and British people enjoying the
scenery. Something was bound to go wrong.
On a bright autumn morning, Superintendent Macdonald boards the plane bound for Vienna to visit his old friend Dr. Natzler. His detective's eye notes some unusual passengers including Elizabeth Le Vendre, new secretary to the diplomat Sir Walter Vanbrugh—but this is supposed to be a holiday. After arriving with the Natzlers and crossing paths with Elizabeth again, Macdonald settles into the trip as best he can, determined to relax for once.
But when Elizabeth is reported missing and a string of violence and murder encircles Vanbrugh and Natzler's social set, Macdonald's short-lived stint as a tourist comes to an end—and the race to stop a killer on the loose begins.
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