The Widow Killer by Pavel Kohout (1995).
In the final days of Nazi occupation in Prague, a serial killer with
serious mental problem is butchering his way through the nights, leaving
hideous sculptures (?) of human remains.
Sounds interesting, right?
But this consists of only the quarter of the
story.
The rest is filled with grand detail of the war,
superb murder mystery and inevitable heavy tension between Czech and Gestapo
detectives, making this truly remarkable book to include in your book
collection.
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layers. –There are three sides in this
book. Czech side, Nazi side and then a killer who sort of belong to Czech side
but ultimately stays in his own fantasy land.
Jan Morava. A rookie police detective who is eager to prove
himself to the legendary inspector Beran.
He is well built and
well trained and more than capable of taking care of himself.
He is started out as a
young rookie kid with bright mind but no experience. However at the end of
everything (yes, he literary goes through heaven to hell), he becomes the man
and more over, the leader.
Kind of life made for the film.
Erwin Buback. A great police inspector turned a Gestapo
agent. The process of turning cops into Gestapo under Third Reich was mandatory,
by the way.
Lost both wife and
daughter to the bombing and since then, he has been looking for a reason to live.
The only Gestapo agent in Prague who can actually
think with brain and does the proper police work.
A serial
killer. This could be the most deranged serial killer
in my recent memory. The bad guy here is completely messed up.
He got brain-damage during the
war and ever since became dangerously delusional: no boundary between reality
and fantasy. He also frequently fades away to oblivion while just sitting on
the bench or chair.
Just like Anthony Perkins in
Psycho, he talks to his dead mother all the time and no, he doesn’t keeps his
mum’s remain in his closet. Just lots of sharp knives to play with dead widows.
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lace. –Prague at the end of WW2.
Since this is a very typical history based thriller where the real historic
events and the surrounding of them are generally more important than either
story or characters, it is extremely lucky for us that the writer of this book
was one of survivors of political uprising in 1968’ Prague. In other word, Pavel
Kohout knows his material inside out better than any writers out there ‘cause
he was simply there when it happened. Also he is a hell of a writer, too.
Anyway,
what I am getting here is that whoever lucky enough to pick up this book will
know everything there is to know about Prague during the war: food,
jobs, buildings, sewer system, economy, politics and even fashion.
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lot. – In the final days
of WW2, on top of all the turmoil, the city of Prague is attacked by a seriously
confused serial killer (more like a butcher from hell) who is specialized in
dismembering widows with truly sick sense of justice(?).
And it is up to two men, Erwin Buback and Jan Morava, to stop this out of
control killer and his hideous crime spree.
That is the thriller
part.
The literature part is
like this: Buback represents the German side of the war story. Morava, Czech’s. And this is
the core of this book, I think.
Buback, as a Gestapo
agent, knows a lot about the war the way only insiders’ know. And since after
his rude awakening with his very wise wife (now deceased), he has been strongly
doubting Hitler and his agenda. Bottom line is that he just can’t come up with
any reasons for the fighting anymore and because of that, he is very cautious
of what he is saying and doing because Nazi is zealously cruel when it gets
down to
the doubters.
Morava, on the other hand,
is a young and straight forward Czech man who represents the oppressed. His job
is not just going after the serial killer (which he does really well too), but
to show the life of true Czechs during and the end of Nazi occupation. He and
his colleagues represent everything there to know about being
Czech.
For the plot line, this
novel is divided into roughly two parts.
The first half is your basic “developing
story, introducing characters and their background” part.
The second half is a
whole different story. With the death of Hitler, the uprising takes over Prague!! Once mighty Nazi is
rapidly losing its ground and Czechs are getting wild screaming revenge!! And
with all the chaos surrounding the city, our deranged serial killer sets
himself free like a shark in the tank full of fat fishes. He kills and kills
and kills and nobody pay any attention to him because they are too busy killing
each others. War creates whole bunch of serial killers, I guess.
And it all comes down
to one shocking ending. Just a Brilliant book.
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erdict. –This book is pure definition of
a great and thoughtful period mystery: rich with historic background and full
of vivid description of Prague and its citizens with
excellent storyline and equally excellent characters.”
However, he just made
one mistake, here. One simple but costly one, I think. The title “The Widow
Killer” just doesn’t do the justice for this magnificent book. It sounds too
narrow and sensational and contemporary and over all, cheap.
This book is not a
simple mystery, far from it. This is a well-researched and brilliantly written
war time literature with lots of fascinating characters with whole bunch of
different backgrounds. And of course, a
crazy son of a bitch, literary, who thinks of himself as a war hero.
So don’t judge this
book by its title. The chasing of the widow killer is a big part of the story
but it’s only one part of the huge story line which includes everything there
is to know about war in Prague.
It’s a wonderful book which requires a serious reading but well worth
the effort.
