β Scribed by LeBor, Adam
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Set in the long, hot Hungarian summer of 2015βand revealing the hidden, criminal world beneath Budapestβs glittering facadeβ District VIII is the first novel in the new Detective Balthazar Kovacs mystery series. Lifeβs tough for a Gypsy detective in Budapest. The cops donβt trust you because youβre a Gypsy. Your fellow Gypsies, even your own family, shun you because youβre a cop. The dead, however, don't care. So when Balthazar Kovacs, a detective in the city's murder squad, gets a mysterious text message on his phone, he gulps down his coffee and goes to work. The message has two parts: a photograph and an address. The photograph shows a man, in his early thirties, lying on his back with his eyes open, half-covered by a blue plastic sheet. The address is 26 Republic Square, the former Communist Party headquarters, and once the most feared building in the country. But when Kovacs arrives at Republic Square, the body is gone... Inspired by true events, the novel takes the reader to a hidden city within Budapest and an underworld that visitors never get to see: the gritty back alleys of District VIII; the endemic corruption that reaches deep into government as officials plunder state coffers at will; a rule of law bent to serve the interests of the rich and powerful; the rising power of international organized crime gangs who use the Hungarian capital as a springboard for their European operations; and a troubling look at the ghosts of Communism (and Nazism) that still haunt Budapest. **
FICTION -- Mystery & Detective -- General
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Lifeβs tough for a Gypsy detective in Budapest. The cops donβt trust you because youβre a Gypsy. Your fellow Gypsies, even your own family, shun you because youβre a cop. The dead, however, don't care. So when Balthazar Kovacs, a detective in the city's murder squad, gets a mysterious text message
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