Prague Nights

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Prague Nights

By: Benjamin Black

Narrated by: Sean Barrett

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About this listen

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Prague Nights by Benjamin Black, read by Sean Barrett.

'The emperor's mistress had been murdered, and the world had been taken hold of and turned upon its head'

Prague, 1599. Christian Stern, a young doctor, has just arrived in the city. On his first evening, he finds a young woman's body half-buried in the snow.

The dead woman is none other than the emperor's mistress, and there's no shortage of suspects. Stern is employed by the emperor himself to investigate the murder. In the search to find the culprit, Stern finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of the emperor's court - unspoken affairs, letters written in code, and bitter rivalries. But there's no turning back now...

Crime Thrillers

Historical

Mystery

Thriller & Suspense

Fiction

Crime

Thriller

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Critic reviews

With its flowing prose, penetrating observation and deft evocation of time and place, Even the Dead is an unalloyed pleasure from start to finish (Independent on 'Even the Dead')

Superb (Irish Times on 'Even the Dead')

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The narrator was very good. But the story - essentially an attempt to at a 16th c whodunnit set in Prague, simply defied my best attempts to stay interested. Far from being a gripping tale, the thing dragged heavily, and I gave up entirely in about chapter 24 or 27. Can’t remember. The author has skill, but I fear he indulged too deeply in his own imaginings and too little in empathizing with the reader, who is soon pleading for something to HAPPEN, for some progress to the plot. The author gives us a plethora of freaks as characters. An evil dwarf, a grossly obese and greedy prelate, a misshapen, psychologically unbalanced Emperor, two bizarre, ruthless rivals vying for supremacy over the kingdom, a nymphomaniac Italian woman seemingly insatiable, a pimpled youth, an aged, gaunt knight, and so on and on. Look, mate. There are many really ordinary and unremarkable people in our century, and it would have been the same then. But you don’t give us those people. Either you wrote this ponderous oddity drugged, or drunk or simply lost inside a world that lost its impact simply by being too fantastical, too incredible.

There is another serious flaw. The protagonist, Christian Stern, is meant to be a scholar of some standing, a master of natural history or the sciences of the age. But he shows no penchant for clear, rational thinking or any ability to organise his task and the facts he gathers into a workable methodology. Instead, he blunders about, missing obvious clues, failing to interrogate either individuals or his own suppositions. Anyone of that era schooled in the classics and the skills of logic and argument, would proceed in a very different manner.
This was my first Audible book, and I fear it may be my last. Very poor value, and frankly, boring as hell ultimately.

As a writer, I longed to give the author a jolt of electricity to get him started again, to up the pace, advance the plot. Anything but another desperately detailed description of weird characters or sweaty rutting. Just not my dish of tea, folks.