The Quiet Twin

In Nazi-occupied Vienna, a string of unsolved murders has thrown the residents of one apartment building into a state of uneasy watchfulness. Anton Beer, a young doctor who has made a study of forensic psychology, is asked by the retired Professor Speckstein to investigate. It is an unwelcome request: Speckstein’s job is to spy on the building’s residentsfor the Nazis, and Doctor Beer has his own reasons for keeping his private life hidden from public scrutiny. When Beer discovers a paralyzed young woman in a neighbour’s apartment, his life is further complicated. The woman is unable to talk and deathly ill, and Beer, whose own wife has recently left him, smuggles her into his home to nurse her in secret. As the story unfolds in propulsive, gripping prose, DanVyleta captures the atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion that was part of encroaching Nazi culture, and explores our disturbing instinct in times of threat to turn a blind eye to uncomfortable realities. The darkest mystery at the heart of this astonishing novel reveals itself to be not a question of whodunit so much as the temper of a diseased society in which every person’s actions are infected by the possibility of evil.