Frank Tallis’s elegant crime novels are set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, but they share RN Morris’s faith in psychology as the key to solving the most complex crimes. Tallis is a clinical psychologist, and his books are a homage to Freud, bringing together a forward-looking detective inspector and a young psychiatrist who is an eager disciple of the great man. In Fatal Lies, the two men are called from a ball to a military college (reached through a dark wood that might be a metaphor for the unconscious) where a cadet has died in mysterious circumstances.

Without modern post-mortem techniques, there is no way of establishing how the victim died, and Inspector Rheinhardt’s boss is keen for him to drop the investigation. But Rheinhardt refuses to give up, uncovering allegations of bullying and a scandal involving the deputy headmaster’s wife. Vienna is a much more urbane city than St Petersburg and Tallis invokes both its intellectual life – Freud’s theories have not yet been accepted, but are beginning to cause excitement – and its flourishing cafe society. One of the pleasures of Tallis’s novels is the ritual of ordering coffee and cakes in beautiful art-nouveau establishments.

On this occasion, though, his psychiatrist Max Liebermann is not his usual rational self. Liebermann is distracted by his feelings for a former patient, Miss Lydgate, and for a passionate Hungarian violinist who may not be quite what she seems. During his trips to the military college, Liebermann struggles to put the women out of his mind and uses psychoanalytic techniques – including asking witnesses to respond to ink blots – to the dismay of Rheinhardt’s superiors.

Tallis has come up with a particularly ingenious method of murder, which leaves no trace and almost claims the lives of two more victims before the culprit is unmasked. His novels show the modern world coming into existence in one of Europe’s great cities, and are all the more poignant for the knowledge that the first world war will soon cast its shadow over his deeply humane characters.

FATAL LIES by Frank Tallis
Century £12.99 pp424

Available at First price of £11.69 (including p&p) on 0870 165 8585

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

Times Recommends

• iD: The Quest for Identity in the 21st Century by Susan Greenfield
• David Fickling, saviour of the great British comic
• Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Triumph of the Medieval Mind by Philip Ball