The confession

In 1956hrushchev denounces Stalinism. Amid the heady optimism of short-lived strikes and protests, a general amnesty for political prisoners is declared, and old injustices are roused as vengeful retributions. Down at People's Militia Headquarters, Inspector Ferencolyeszar is faced with an apparent suicide, the missing wife of a prominent Party member, a charred and brutalized corpse, and the watchful eyes of a newly arrived official from Moscow. Then there's the imminent collapse of his marriage: an old friend and fellow officer appears to be cuckolding him, while Ferenc nurses some latent obsessions of his own, sexual and otherwise. The story of a troubled homicide detective wrestling with internal and external demons is hardly new, but seldom is it presented with such depth and personal intensity. Beyond delivering an involving police procedural in an intriguing setting, the author relates with spare irony his narrator's psychological journey through the vexatious complexities of marriage and totalitarian life, drawn toward the deceptive clarity of brutal action. This second installment in a loosely linked series (following last year's Bridge of Sighs) is enthusiastically recommended for fans of well-made hard-boiled and noir fiction. --David Wright Copyright 2004 Booklist

Ferenc Kolyeszar, the main character in this sharp tale of murder, political intrigue and human failings, is a large, disillusioned police inspector with a weakness for drink and cigarettes. Narrator Dean's naturally deep, gravelly voice works well in that context, but the rest of his performance is uneven. The novel takes place in an unnamed Eastern Bloc nation in 1956, and it centers on a series of converging discoveries by Kolyeszar and his colleagues. As Moscow asserts an increasing influence in the country, their office and their personal lives become charged with distrust and fear, a sense that becomes more pronounced as they draw closer to unveiling a dire secret. Dean has a clear sense of drama and narrative pacing, and he wisely steps back and allows Steinhauer (The Bridge of Sighs) to set the progressively nervy tone. But while he renders most of the male characters believably-albeit without much nuance-he struggles with females and with sustaining any voice that's said to have an idiosyncrasy. The production is spare and straightforward, but the engrossing story makes up for the recording's slight imperfections. Simultaneous release with the St. Martin's Minotaur hardcover (Forecasts, Dec. 1, 2003). (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In the late 1930s, Eric Ambler published several novels set in Eastern Europe that earned him acclaim as the master of the spy thriller. Though at a much earlier stage in his career, Steinhauer (The Bridge of Sighs) has staked out the same world in the mid-1950s with equal assurance and a greater mastery of character. Under the watchful eye of State Security and the KGB, Ferenc Kolyeszar, homicide inspector in an unnamed Eastern European capital, investigates a series of murders that leads him into the city's grim underworld. At the same time, he's forced to confront his own crumbling marriage, writer's block, and the decay of a system in crisis. This is a gripping and fully realized portrayal of a man whose strengths, flaws, struggle, and ultimate fall are emblematic of the fate of Eastern Europe itself. While skillfully developed, the intricacies of plot, particularly the story behind the diverse crimes, fade to relative insignificance in light of Ferenc's heartrending "confession." Densely atmospheric and strongly recommended for academic and public libraries.-Ronnie H. Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Postwar Eastern Europe chillingly evoked by a storyteller (Bridge of Sighs, 2003) who understands the relentless conjunction between character and suspense. In 1956, the Soviet Union is a dark, debilitating presence in the lives of Eastern Europeans. Ferenc Kolyeszar is a homicide detective, a Comrade Inspector in the People's Militia of his unnamed, war-ravaged little country. For some time the Soviet miasma has been affecting the way he thinks and behaves. But then comes the order to help squash a student demonstration, one he might well have joined under altered circumstances. He swings his club, knocks a few people down, then bolts, suddenly confronted with an overpowering sense of a society and a self in decay. He feels "dirtied" in ways he can only partially articulate. The murder case he's handed a few days later does little to restore lost equilibrium. A party bureaucrat whose wife has disappeared tells the police he fears foul play. His prophecy is soon justified--except that the official himself is the vicious perpetrator. Though it's a bad case, with roots in a murky past the KGB wants to keep buried, Ferenc works it assiduously, with helpless fatalism, knowing it has personal disaster written all over it. But he's willing to plunge into disaster if that's the price of redemption. Good enough to suggest comparison with Graham Greene: place the author in the forefront of contemporary suspense writers, and make your mouth occasionally go dry. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

/*Starred Review*/ In 1956 Khrushchev denounces Stalinism. Amid the heady optimism of short-lived strikes and protests, a general amnesty for political prisoners is declared, and old injustices are roused as vengeful retributions. Down at People's Militia Headquarters, Inspector Ferenc Kolyeszar is faced with an apparent suicide, the missing wife of a prominent Party member, a charred and brutalized corpse, and the watchful eyes of a newly arrived official from Moscow. Then there's the imminent collapse of his marriage: an old friend and fellow officer appears to be cuckolding him, while Ferenc nurses some latent obsessions of his own, sexual and otherwise. The story of a troubled homicide detective wrestling with internal and external demons is hardly new, but seldom is it presented with such depth and personal intensity. Beyond delivering an involving police procedural in an intriguing setting, the author relates with spare irony his narrator's psychological journey through the vexatious complexities of marriage and totalitarian life, drawn toward the deceptive clarity of brutal action. This second installment in a loosely linked series (following last year's Bridge of Sighs) is enthusiastically recommended for fans of well-made hard-boiled and noir fiction. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 2004)) Copyright 2004 Booklist Reviews.

In the late 1930s, Eric Ambler published several novels set in Eastern Europe that earned him acclaim as the master of the spy thriller. Though at a much earlier stage in his career, Steinhauer (The Bridge of Sighs) has staked out the same world in the mid-1950s with equal assurance and a greater mastery of character. Under the watchful eye of State Security and the KGB, Ferenc Kolyeszar, homicide inspector in an unnamed Eastern European capital, investigates a series of murders that leads him into the city's grim underworld. At the same time, he's forced to confront his own crumbling marriage, writer's block, and the decay of a system in crisis. This is a gripping and fully realized portrayal of a man whose strengths, flaws, struggle, and ultimate fall are emblematic of the fate of Eastern Europe itself. While skillfully developed, the intricacies of plot, particularly the story behind the diverse crimes, fade to relative insignificance in light of Ferenc's heartrending "confession." Densely atmospheric and strongly recommended for academic and public libraries.-Ronnie H. Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Steinhauer's original and mesmerizing first mystery, 2002's The Bridge of Sighs, was set in 1949, in an unnamed East European country. Now it's 1956, and the homicide detective who starred in that first book-the young, hopeful Emil Brod-has become a dour and pragmatic secondary character as the promise of the immediate postwar years fades. Steinhauer focuses instead on another police officer, the looming Ferenc Kolyeszar, a huge man who wears on each finger a ring with a grisly history. Ferenc is a talented novelist, though his sole published book so far exists only as a tattered paperback. But the confession of the title is in fact the subject of his next book-a jarring and pessimistic work about the fate of artists, indeed of all human beings, in the Soviet-haunted satellite countries, where work camps in the 1950s rival those of the Stalinist Soviet Union. Haunted by his wife's infidelities and driven perversely into his own, Ferenc falls afoul of a smiling KGB agent named Kaminski who has been assigned to his office. Investigating several past and present murders, Ferenc digs a hole for himself that is both believable and inevitable. Bigger in scope and slower-moving than The Bridge of Sighs, with deaths and deceptions snowballing grotesquely, the novel makes readers wonder just what Steinhauer will do for the next book in his series-and how far into the future it will take his team of citizen cops. Agent, Matt Williams. (Mar.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.