The Carpathian Assignment

K lv ry Istvan, widower and former Hungarian cavalry colonel, hopes for a quiet life when he accepts the position of chief of police in the Carpathian city of Bistritz. It's no less than a man deserves after years of service to his Kaiser and king. Sadly, Istvan's going to be disappointed. Someone or something haunts the streets of Bistritz and the surrounding Transylvanian mountains. Ask Istvan's new colleague, G bor Kasza of the Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie, and he'd say evidence points to a well-established serial killer, possibly hidden among the oppressed and reviled Roma, who call the nearby Borgo Pass home. Ask Freudian devotee Baron Krafft-Ebing and he'd agree, although his interest lies more in studying the psychopath's mind than bringing him to justice. Ask the mountain people of the Carpathians, however, and they'd disagree. They'd point to the long history of killings and disappearances in the region, which stretch back longer than any one man's lifetime. They'd speak in hushed voices of the Roma's supposed master, and an abandoned castle where he lives with his demonic wives. The bravest residents might even risk whispering a name: Dracula. Kalvary Istvan, like Kasza and Krafft-Ebing, considers himself a modern nineteenth-century man, with little time for legends and superstitions, but as he and Kasza pursue their investigation, reason and deduction begin to give way to dark, ancient truths and local belief. At once a thrilling detective yarn and intriguing backstory to Bram Stoker's Dracula, The Carpathian Assignment immerses readers in the rich setting of the Hungarian kingdom at the end of the nineteenth century, a nation in which science and logic clash with centuries of cultural conviction and superstition.