Lord Mord

By Milos Urban

From Miloš Urban, author of international bestseller The Seven Churches, comes a new thriller. Hapsburg Prague at the end of the nineteenth century seethes with tension between Czechs seeking independence and the German-speaking population who wield the power. Caught between both are the Jews. Josefov, the Jewish Quarter, is being modernized, causing large-scale destruction of the medieval city. Moving through this maelstrom is the drug-addicted, absinthe-drinking, tubercular Adi, Count Arco, aka Lord Mord, a Bohemian throwback who dotes on the ancient buildings and courtyards of the old town. Buying a house in Josefov, he refuses to move, going into battle with the faceless bureaucrats at the Town Hall who want the residents evicted. Meanwhile, the nighttime alleyways are haunted by a mythological monster nicknamed Kleinfleisch. Prostitutes are being murdered, and when Lord Mord's mistress becomes a victim, he finds himself sucked into wider events that wrench him out of his Bohemian idyll. A dizzying cocktail of mystery, murder and Gothic romance, Lord Mord is more than worthy of an author who has been dubbed 'the dark knight of Czech literature'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers
• Release date: Apr 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9780720610284

Reviews for Lord Mord

[josephcamilleri-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Lord Mord" opens with an edited extract from "Bestia Triumphans", an inflammatory pamphlet published in 1896 by Czech writer Vilém Mrštík in which he denounces the "clearance" and rebuilding of the Prague Jewish quarter, known as Josefov. The fictional plot of the novel unfolds against this historical backdrop. Its narrator is Count Arco, a thirty year-old member of the minor Czech nobility who wastes his time and money on whores, alcohol and drugs and who knows the Jewry well thanks to his dubious nightly haunts. It is difficult to warm to Arco - he is indolent and arrogant and his attitude to women is particularly demeaning. Indeed, this threatens to mar one's enjoyment of the novel, which lacks a strong female character to balance the misogyny of the protagonist. Arco however turns into an unlikely hero when he purchases an ancient house and stands up to the authorities when they include it into their demolition plans. In the incendiary political atmosphere of the turn of the century, this borders on an act of treason against the imperial authorities. As if this were not enough, Arco's path crosses that of "Kleinfleisch", a mythological bogeymen who starts to haunt the Jewish quarter, killing prostitutes close to Arco."Lord Mord" shares several elements with Urban's earlier and better known novel The Seven Churches - not least the Prague setting, the concept of the individual resisting "modern" developments and the serial killer subplot. This is, therefore, another "Gothic novel of Prague" but whereas Seven Churches was based in 1990s Prague with mysterious flashbacks/visions of the Middle Ages, "Lord Mord" is squarely set a century before. I don't know about the original Czech version, but the flowing translation by Gerald Turner does not attempt to mimic the flowery language of the period. Instead of a pastiche of the style, the novels of the 19th century are referenced through elements of plot and setting, which replicate common tropes of the classic urban Gothic and adventure novels - narrow, foggy streets; drug-fuelled visions; consumptive prostitutes; serial killers sowing terror in the cover of the night; and also some final derring-do worthy of Dumas. On the whole, I felt that whilst less original and striking than Seven Churches, "Lord Mord" is better crafted and more satisfactory from a purely narrative point of view. No cult novel then, but certainly an assured and entertaining one.