Review: Not nearly enough
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 23, 2014
Maybe I misread the authors intentions, but my impression was that he wrote a superficial thriller in order to transport us to a pre-world-war I Vienna. If that had been indeed the plan, it failed. The Vienna painted in Death Walz is pale, two-dimensional and largely uninteresting. It is not enough to know the map and a few landmarks like the Prater or Sacher's; or for that matter to describe (very supeficially) an opulent bordello. The city and the people (court, politics, army, demi-monde, Jews, etc.) do not come alive, despite the authors a bit anachronistic style to impart a note of authenticity. If, on the other hand, the Vienna setting is just an excuse for a period-placed thriller, the failure is even more obvious. The plot is thin and hardly believable. The evil that serves as a mainspring of the"devilish" plot - cardboard and pedestrian. The one scene that caught me is the Bacarat game, in my opinion very well written and  saving the writer's reputation. Wish he wrote a book describing gambling in Venna!