Book Description
Set in the German-occupied city of Prague during the
twilight of World War II, The Widow Killer is an
extraordinary achievement by a literary artist of the first
rank. The novel opens jarringly with the gruesome murder of
the baroness of Pomerania, the widow of a German Wehrmacht
general, by a perverted serial killer. The coroner's report
determines that the victim did not resist and was not raped.
Mysteriously, her heart was removed and vanished with the
killer.
So begins this savage morality tale in which good and evil
collide against a backdrop of political turmoil. The unlikely
pair of Jan Morava, a rookie Czech detective, and Erwin
Buback, a Gestapo agent who is questioning his loyalty to the
Nazis, set out to track down the sadistic killer before he
can strike again. But as Morava and Buback follow the
killer's bloody trail through Prague, it becomes clear that
he is not a political radical or a wartime dissident but a
tormented psychopath. In the downward spiral of the Third
Reich's final days, both officers must tirelessly search for
a sinister murderer while grappling with their own emotional
demons.
As the war proceeds to its gruesome end, the narrative
sinuously shifts perspectives, taking us deep into the
emotional maelstrom of each of the characters: young Morava,
struggling to find love and approval in a war-torn city; the
disillusioned Buback, haunted by the ghosts of his beloved
wife and daughter; and the tormented killer, sent on a bloody
rampage to please "her whom be obeys."
Weaving a delicate tale of human struggle under a
thrilling murder, Pavel Kohout has created a memorable work
of fiction that will rank as one the last important novels
from one the war's direct eyewitnesses.
