Review: The Crooked Maid

In Dan Vyleta’s third novel, he is back on familiar ground — survivors amid the rubble of a city ruined by the Second World War.

It starts with two strangers on a train, one a schoolboy and the other a woman hoping for a reunion with her prisoner-of-war husband, and follows them through the bombed-out streets of post-war Vienna.

Wounded war veterans, Soviet spies, unrepentant Nazis and their victims all rub shoulders in the 400-plus pages as the writer unravels half-a-dozen different mysteries, including several possible murders, suspected kidnappings, and sprawling family secrets.

But this is not your typical thriller, and it is not the twists and turns of the plot that will keep readers turning the pages. It is the atmosphere Vyleta builds up, line by line, of a world of secrets threatening to fall down on the characters’ heads at any moment.