In this auspicious literary crime debut, an inexperienced homicide detective struggles amid the lawlessness of a post-WWII Eastern European city. It's August, 1948, three years after the Russians "liberated" this small nation from German Occupation. But the Red Army still patrols the capital's rubble-strewn streets, and the ideals of the Revolution are but memories. Twenty-two-year-old Detective Emil Brod, an eager young man who spent the war working...

Struggling with writer's block and a suspicion that his wife is cheating on him, Comrade Inspector Ferenc Kolyestar investigates the disappearance of a party member's wife and fears the woman may have run away from her abusive husband.