This image is the cover for the book Keeper of Hands, The Viennese Mysteries

Keeper of Hands, The Viennese Mysteries

An intriguing novel of suspense that “recreates the beau monde of vintage Vienna with verisimilitude and consummate style” (Kirkus Reviews).

Vienna, 1901. With the police seemingly indifferent to the murder of a nineteen-year-old prostitute known as Mitzi, brothel-keeper Frau Mutzenbacher turns to lawyer Karl Werthen to find out what happened and bring her killer to justice. Yet the more he discovers about the mysterious Mitzi, with her secret past and impressive roster of clients, the more questions Werthen’s investigation throws up.

At the same time, Werthen undertakes a second commission: to find out who viciously assaulted playwright Arthur Schnitzler. Schnitzler believes his latest controversial play might have been the motive for the attack—but is there more to it than that?

As he navigates the highs and lows of Viennese society in dogged pursuit of the truth, Werthen finds himself drawn into a conspiracy of espionage and affairs of state.

“Top-notch detecting and characterizations bolster the intricate plot” (Publishers Weekly) of this superb fourth book in the Viennese Mystery series that is “not as widely known as it ought to be, [but] well worth a look” (Booklist).

J. Sydney Jones

J. Sydney Jones (b. 1948) is an American author of fiction and nonfiction. Born in the United States, he studied abroad in Vienna in 1968 and later returned to Austria to live there for nearly two decades. In the late 1970s he began writing travel books, many of which concern central Europe, and published his first thriller, Time of the Wolf, in 1990. In 2009 Jones published The Empty Mirror, a mystery set in late-nineteenth-century Vienna that would become the first book in his Viennese Mystery series, of which the most recent installment is The Keeper of Hands (2013). Jones lives with his wife and son in California. 

Severn House