Master of the Day of Judgment by Leo Perutz
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
This classic fantastic mystery by Leo Perutz is set in Vienna in the early 20th century. The themes and devices will be familiar to us post-modern readers. A romantic triangle in the era of the late Hapsburgs as in Sándor Márai’s Embers. Guilt over sexual transgressions as in Arthur Schnitzler’s stories from decadent Vienna. The secret revealed in a manuscript as in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. The phantasmagoric atmosphere as in William Kotzwinkle’s Fata Morgana. The unreliability of an unsympathetic narrator – well, name your favorite modernist writer from the early 20th century.
Our narrator, the often ruthless and brutal Baron Yosch, narrates the events surrounding the suicide of actor Eugene Bischoff, the latest in a mysterious series of suicides. His chronicle is plagued by semi-confessed guilt over adultery. We readers receive tantalizing hints as to who is behind the eponymous “The Master of the Day of Judgment.” As the amateur detectives Solgrub and Gorsky reconstruct the dead man’s final hours, we realize we have to read this slowly so as not to be more confused than the author intends us to be.
Pretty creepy, with a surprise ending. Readers looking for a slightly lighter Kafkaesque mystery won’t go wrong.
