Capture Murder In Vienna Penned By E.C.R. Lorac Shown As Script

were aspects of Murder In Vienna which I liked, but overall I found it a bit of a slog,

First published inand a late book in a longrunning series, this is a tale of intrigue and detection in a Vienna which is still recovering from the devastating effects of the Second World War and its aftermath.
Superintendent Macdonald of the CID, is going there for a holiday to meet an old friend, when he becomes involved in trying to solve strange goingson including attacks on two Brits who shared a plane with Macdonald on the way out.


As a plot its adequate but not brilliant, the characterisation is quite good but somewhat stereotypical and Im afraid the dialogue is horribly stilted sometimes.
Lorac does set a very good background: the description of air travel inis very interesting and she paints a fine picture of Vienna at that time.
This lends the book a good deal more interest especially for me because much of the action is set in the suburb of Hietzing, to which I have strong family ties.
I found that very poignant without it, I may not have stuck with the book to the end, and even as it is I was quite glad to get to the end and start something else.


So not terrible, not great. I may give Lorac another try at some point, but I can only give this a very qualified recommendation, Superintendent Macdonald, CID, studied his fellowpassengers on the Vienna plane simply because he couldnt help it, because he hadnt conditioned himself to being on holiday, The distinguished industrialist he recognised: the stout man he put down quite mistakenly as a traveller in whisky, The fair girl was going to a job he was right there and the aggressive young man in the camel coat might be something bookish, Macdonald turned away from his fellowpassengers deliberately they werent his business, he was on holiday or so he thought, I have read a few titles by E, C. R. Lorac now Edith Caroline Rivett,and have enjoyed them, This is the staggeringlynd book in her longrunning Robert Macdonald series, first published inand was written in the later years of her career, which ran from the beginning of the's all the way up to the year of her death.


This mystery sees Superintendent Macdonald flying to Austria, to stay with a friend of his, Franz Natzler, a Jewish refugee who had come to London during the war, where the two men had firewatched together.
However, of course, a straight forward holiday is unlikely and when a young secretary Macdonald meets on the plane is found with a head injury, foul play is suspected.
Then another man, also on the same plane, is found dead and Macdonald is asked to investigate,

Although this was a very enjoyable read, it did have a very obvious clue, I will forgive the author as she was in her seventies at the time of writing this, so the odd slip can be forgiven, I did enjoy the cast of characters, who all arrive in a postwar Vienna, where the war still casts a shadow, and Macdonald's gentle unravelling of the clues, even if even I worked out whodunnit pretty early on.
However, this kindle version definitely needs a proof reader it is full of typos, . .
Another entertaining mystery featuring C, I. D. 's Robert Macdonald. This one is set in the mids,
Macdonald is taking a wellearned vacation to revisit Vienna,
Of course he is inevitably drawn into the police world when an Englishman with high connections is murdered,
The descriptions of Vienna were wonderful, the mystery was twisty, I was just about ready to call 'foul' when the killer was revealed, but I then remembered a scene earlier in the book that set up the killer's identity.
Lorac always plays fair you just have to pay attention!

A note on this editionyikes! the scanning errors!! Be prepared for numerous typos, Or “Strangers on a Plane, ” Vienna during the early Cold War so it must be a conspiracy, MacDonald just wants to go on vacation which no one believes hes doing and gets dragged into skulduggery involving the English abroad, many of whom were on his flight, including a nice young girl, a supercilious scholar, an unpleasant best selling author, and an early paparazzo albeit a cockney.
Well handled. Also charming for its description of a time when air travel and air ports were pleasant, even luxurious, Excellent story marred by poor production

This is another ebook that should have been read by a human before being published or at least have gone through a spellcheck.
Seeing how many characters an apostrophe had been turned into detracted from the story, I enjoyed this relatively short mystery set in mids Vienna, despite the edition which is rife with the typical flaws of a scanned book there was only one instance when I couldnt figure out how the original would have read.


“Lorac” is one of the pseudonyms of Edith Caroline Rivett, a capable and prolific Golden Age mystery writer who is now being rediscovered after years of unmerited obscurity.
Her main detective is a CID inspector now superintendent named Macdonald, a Scot with a good mind and a mild sense of humor, He makes for a pleasant and not overly intrusive guide, though at times I wish for an eccentricity or two, In this story he has arrived in Vienna on vacation, only to become embroiled in a mystery and be drafted by his superiors into collaboration with the Viennese police.


We begin with a detailed description of his flight from London to Vienna, with a stop in Zurich, This bit feels leisurely and inconsequential but it serves to introduce several central characters and a handful of vital clues, Lorac plays fair with her readers and most of the details necessary to understand the mystery are provided quite early on the challenge is only to disentangle them from the red herrings.
Mysterious incidents of violence, shady characters with suspect agendas, and venality abound, The characters are mostly interesting and allowed the due exercise of their personalities, as well as opportunities to both enlighten and mislead the reader, Several characters have multiple names, so this is a book that repays reading in as few sittings as possible to avoid confusionI occasionally wished for a paper copy so I could check back to earlier chapters.


The atmosphere of Vienna in this era is beautifully evoked, save for a somewhat clunky travelogue scene when Macdonald first arrives, which reads like the exposition it is.
So much had happened in the city over the preceding halfcentury, and the emotional and material scars borne by its residents are convincingly woven into the storyline.
There was not a lot of fat in the narrative, just enough to leave the reader occasionally on shaky ground,

I developed a pretty clear sense of the outlines of the story but got enough details wrong that the ending didnt feel flat to me.
I am glad that Lorac tends to avoid those dramatic scenes so popular in more recent mysteries where the villain explains the entire plot while holding the good guys at gunpoint here the main points of the plot are revealed in a clever way, though there was a recap scene afterward which felt not entirely necessary to me in which Macdonald ties up the loose ends.


Strong writing, good plotting, efficiency without excess hasteLorac tends to offer very competently produced mysteries, and this was no exception, MacDonald is on holiday in this book, He books a flight to Vienna apparently on a Viscount and although this is mentioned a lot, is irrelevant, During the flight he notices a young woman who would like to look out of the window, but is obstructed by a man reading a book who has the window seat.
At Zurich the plane lands and the passengers are divided by those who wish to carry with the flight and those heading for Vienna, This young woman attaches herself to MacDonald, as she thinks he looks trustworthy, for his help on carrying on her journey to Vienna, He learns that the woman is going to be a secretary to an elderly man writing his memoirs, For the first days of his holiday he meets this woman and tells her of the sights and places Vienna is famous for, Shortly after this he hears that the woman has gone

missing and so sets out to find her, This is where the story really begins and a murder does take place, Needless to say, MacDonald has to cut his holiday short and help the police with their investigations,
I found the start of this was more like a travelogue, than a fiction book, so was pleased when the action got going, Once this stage was reached, it was quite a complicated plot, bringing in various different but interesting characters,.stars.
Murder in Vienna is a late entry into the MacDonald series and is set in, It is a work of a skilled wordsmith, It was quite nice to read about Vienna and it's places and history, It has one absolutely fascinating character, . . Webster. It has a good atmosphere and sense of place,
However,it's a murder mystery at its core and not a bad one, There is a large number of people involved and sometimes it became a challenge to recall who was who, I also had a sense that some of the characters besides MacDonald and Reeves had made previous appearances in the series,
However, I don't think anyone would be likely to crack the case as the murderers actual identity and motive is very well hiddenyou may say not hinted at all.

Overall,this was a complex mystery with some story elements found more commonly in an Ambler or HighSmith novels rather in british detective stories, It was very readable,never boring but ultimately somewhat less satisfying than her best books, But atrupees in Kindle ,it was easily worth it, I loved the descriptions of Vienna the city and its culture, So much so, that I was compelled in the middle of the book to go on the internet to view the sights described,
The mystery was ok amp I found it difficult to make sense of some of the dialogue, Not sure if it wass British slang , but it eluded me,
Overall a lovely read because of the writing,


This is an already "tested and approved" author in a genre I love, Maybe Macdonald isn't Poirot, mas he's an interesting character all the same, Lovely even. It's also very interesting to get to read about Vienna after World War II, so very different from today speaking as a tourist, I only recommend a little editing, because there are some mistakes especially commas and a lot of typos, Robert MacDonald is visiting friends in Vienna on holiday, Then a young girl who was on the flight with him from London is found unconscious at the bottom of a set of stairs and another fellow passenger killed in what was made to look like a car accident.
And so he his holiday comes to an end and he has to cooperate with local authorities to solve the mystery, Not the best by ECR Lorac, but very evocative in time and place, .