Sins of the Father: A Countess of Prague Mystery

Two baffling mysteries challenge irrepressible Countess Beatrix “Trixie” von Falklenburg in Weeks’s lively sequel to 2017’s The Countess of Prague. In the winter of 1905, Trixie’s phone number turns up in the pocket of the headless corpse of a man found in a carriage of the Prague funicular railway. The body is later identified as that of a celebrated magician. Police inspector Schneider asks Trixie to help investigate. Meanwhile, she’s summoned to the Hofburg Palace in Vienna for an audience with Franz-Josef I, whose only son, Crown Prince Rudolf, apparently committed suicide at a hunting lodge outside Vienna in 1889. The year before, the emperor tells her, Rudolf very nearly shot him in a hunting accident. He wants Trixie to find out whether Rudolf in fact meant to kill him. For assistance, Trixie can count on her resourceful butler, Müller, her trusty lady’s maid, Sabine, and the all-encompassing web of aristocratic associates and relatives spun by her mother. Weeks evokes the mores and manners of the period with a blend of richly nuanced details and sly wit. (May)