A Dead Man in Trieste

It is 1910, Lomax, the British Consul in Trieste has disappeared.  Seymour, a policeman in the British Special Branch has been sent to investigate the disappearance.  He finds Trieste to be a polyglot of nationalities, so his growing up in the East End of London is valuable.

Seymour's investigation is covert, yet Kornbluth, the local head of the police is prepared to help.  There are underlying currents of money, political intrigue and sex.  Seymour finds it hard to come to grips with what Lomax had become in Trieste.  It isn't long before the body of Lomax is found at sea.

In an empire like the Austrian Empire, the government needed to know everything, so Seymour wasn't surprised to find that he had acquired a shadow.  Seymour also finds himself entangled with Maddalena, one of the many artists that Lomax had befriended.  Seymour finds out that Koskash, the man working for Lomax has been selling British papers to Serb nationals.  Serbia had been very angry at Austria when the empire had annexed Bosnia a few years earlier.  Could this set of a major international incident?

Michael Pearce has created a novel full of intrigue and events that foreshadowed the event which led directly to World War One.  Not a bad read.