Official Web Site of J. Sydney Jones Official Web Site of J. Sydney Jones
Official Web Site of J. Sydney Jones Official Web Site of J. Sydney Jones

Home

About the Author

Viennese Mysteries

Vienna 1900

Characters

Events & News

Other Books

Interviews

Q & A

Contact

Blog


University
 

"What Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did for Victorian London and Caleb Carr did for old New York, J. Sydney Jones does for historic Vienna."
Karen Harper, New York Times bestselling author

The Silence
    Seven House (Hardcover)
    UK ed: August, 2011
    US ed: December, 2011

    Buy the book:

    Amazon.com
    Powell's
    Barns & Noble
    Books a Million

The Silence

The eagerly awaited third volume in the critically acclaimed Viennese Mystery series is now available.

Included in Kirkus Reviews   
"10 Thrillers to Watch for This Fall" list:
"[Jones uses] mystery fiction to resurrect beautiful, historic Vienna." (August 30, 2011)

"Jones vividly evokes 1900 Vienna under the leadership of its notorious anti-Semitic mayor, Karl Lueger, in his splendid third whodunit featuring attorney Karl Werthen and criminologist Hanns Gross.... Jones poses a challenging puzzle for his savvy investigator while subtly portraying the growing threat to Europe’s Jews." (November 14, 2011)
Publishers Weekly   (*starred review)

Vienna, 1900. Lawyer and private inquiries agent Karl Werthen is puzzling over the high-profile suicide of a city councilman--former client, next in line to Vienna’s powerful Mayor Karl Lueger, and the last man Werthen would think capable of suicide. Werthen, however, has little time to ponder, as he is summoned by wealthy industrialist Karl Wittgenstein (father of the future philosopher Ludwig) to find his oldest son, Hans, who has gone missing.

Werthen soon discovers the whereabouts of the musically-minded Hans, and the case appears to be solved. But appearances are deceiving, and a simple missing person’s case soon leads back to the councilman's suicide. Werthen—once again ably assisted by his wife, Berthe, and real-life father of criminology, Dr. Hanns Gross—journeys into a sinister web of deceit and violence that threatens not only his life, but also the very heart of the city and the empire.

 Read an excerpt
 Read interviews




The Man in the Tower
    Kindle Edition
    (December, 2011)

    Buy the book:
    Amazon.com

Travel back to Cold War Vienna

The Man in the Tower

Product Description from the publisher:

Critically acclaimed novelist J. Sydney Jones brings Cold War Europe to stark and often humorous life in this memoir of his two decades living in Vienna as a foreign correspondent and fledgling writer. With the same attention to detail exhibited in his acclaimed "Viennese Mysteries" series, Jones parses the world of Central Europe, from the quotidian to the political.

Here is the blue-eyed refugee from the Biafran War, Ubhani, the man in the tower of the title, seeking asylum in the Austrian capital; the Hungarian patriot who pays his own special tribute to the 1956 uprising; the nondescript state police agent commissioned to watch foreigners in neutral Austria to ensure they did not ruffle the feathers of the Soviets; the editor of a prestigious Viennese publishing house none too eager to do business with a brash young Ami.

Travel with Jones back to Czechoslovakia just months after the Soviet's brutal suppression of Prague Spring in'68; to guard towers along the waist-deep waters of a lake on the Austro-Hungarian border; to a cozy armchair at the British Council Library; to an all-purpose Tabak Trafik: to life in a Cretan cave; or to the final voyage of the SS France.

Jones proves a dependable and insightful guide to this forgotten world before the Wall came down.

An added bonus is the short story, "Body Blows," which introduces Sam Kramer, the foreign correspondent protagonist from Jones's new series of novels set in Europe following the fall of the Wall.



Requiem in Vienna
    Hardcover (2010)
    St. Martin’s Minotaur

    Buy the book:

    Amazon.com
    Powell's
    Barns & Noble
    Books a Million
    Indie Bound
Das Haus der Spiegel
    German edition of
    The Empty Mirror,
    published 2010

Requiem in Vienna

The composer Gustav Mahler is at the heart of this intriguing and compelling mystery/thriller set in Vienna 1900.

"Sophisticated entertainment of a very high caliber."
Kirkus Reviews  (*starred review)

"A first-class historical mystery."
Booklist  (*starred review)

"A compelling period whodunit with bountiful cultural and social details.”
Publishers Weekly

 Read more about the book
 Read more praise from the critics
 Read an excerpt
 Read interviews






















"[An] absorbing whodunit that succeeds both as a mystery and as a fascinating portrait of a traditional society in ferment." —Publishers Weekly  (*starred review)

The Empty Mirror

The Empty Mirror
     Paperback (2010)
     St. Martin’s Minotaur

     Buy the book:

     Amazon.com
     Powell's
     Barns & Noble
     Books a Million
     Indie Bound

The highly praised first volume of the Viennese Mystery series is now available in paperback.

Fin de siècle Vienna comes to vibrant life in this colorful historical thriller featuring the artist Gustav Klimt.

"...Jones delivers a meaty historical that bodes well for further adventures.."
Publishers Weekly   (*starred review)

"This one bears watching."
Booklist

"Jones keeps his mystery moving along with a good deal of skill, but the greatest interest of the novel lies in its glimpses of the political passions and bizarre occurrences of the era.... In recent years, fin-de-siecle Vienna has shown signs of becoming to literary thrillers what 1940s Los Angeles is to noir. The Empty Mirror, a colorful story that neatly combines fact and fiction, suggests why."
Patrick Anderson, review in Washington Post

"Jones ... deftly melds fact with fiction in a novel that will appeal to mystery aficionados as well as history buffs"
Richmond Times-Dispatch

 Read more about the book
 Read more praise from the critics
 Read an excerpt





Top