The Empty Mirror: A Viennese Mystery
A young country girl, model and lover of painter Gustav Klimt, is viciously murdered in 1898 Vienna. Klimt, the bête noire of Viennese painting, is arrested and charged with her murder. To clear his name, the painter calls his friend and lawyer, Karl Werthern. Werthern and Hans Gross, a well-known criminologist, join together to uncover the perpetrator of the crime. This quickly becomes difficult since it appears that the model’s killing is linked to four other sadistic murders. Discarding theories and hindered by increasingly antagonistic authorities, Werthern and Gross are soon entangled in a dangerous investigation that leads them deeper and deeper into a conspiracy involving not only the upper echelons of the Austrian aristocracy, but the imperial House of Hapsburg.
With cameo appearances by Mark Twain, Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and a host of characters, Jones, the author of many nonfiction books about Vienna, takes the reader on a historical tour of his favorite city. Adorned with art nouveau chic, Vienna appears beautiful and intriguing, an intellectual and artistic center in the European landscape of the time. Before CSI and the advent of forensics, The Empty Mirror is an account of bizarre murders, highly unusual suspects, and a pair of sleuths who, step by logical step, solve this engaging thriller.
