The Third Place: A Viennese Mystery

In Jones’s atmospheric sixth mystery set in early 20th-century Vienna (after 2014’s A Matter of Breeding), Karl Andric, the majordomo of the Café Burg, appears to have taken a fatal fall on the ice, until an eyewitness comes forward to report that someone bashed Karl’s head in and made it look like an accident. A colleague of Karl’s asks attorney Karl Werthen to investigate, but before Werthen can do much more than learn possible motives for the murder, he gets a priority assignment he can’t refuse. He and criminologist Dr. Hanns Gross are summoned to the Hapsburgs’ country home and asked to recover a compromising letter involving Emperor Franz Josef. That mission proves to be the precursor to their involvement in an even higher-stakes problem. Werthen’s independent and capable wife, Berthe, also plays a significant role, and while the whodunit element is less dominant than in other books in the series, its resolution is satisfying. [em]Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune Agency. (Oct.) [/em]