Max leaned in, sniffing the air. He noticed a faint, sweet scent of almonds and lavender clinging to the man’s lapel. "It isn’t romance, it’s suppression . Look at his hands." The clerk’s fingers were locked in a specific, rhythmic position, as if he were holding a phantom partner. "He wasn't murdered in a fight. He was murdered in a trance."
Their investigation led them from the gilded ballrooms of the aristocracy to a shadowy "Dream Salon" in the Leopoldstadt district. There, a rogue hypnotist was charging elites to live out their darkest fantasies while under a deep slumber. Max realized the victim hadn't been poisoned by a substance, but by a psychological suggestion: the hypnotist had convinced the man he was drowning while sitting in the dry carriage, causing his brain to shut down his lungs.
Set in , the story follows Max Liebermann, a young doctor and student of Sigmund Freud, as he teams up with Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt to solve grizzly, high-stakes crimes.
Detective Oskar Rheinhardt stood over the body in the middle of the Prater amusement park. The victim was a high-ranking clerk from the Ministry of Finance, found perfectly slumped in a Ferris wheel carriage. There were no marks of violence—no blood, no bruising—only a look of absolute, frozen terror on his face.
"I prefer a simple thief with a knife, Max," Oskar grumbled, though he signaled the waiter for two coffees. "At least with a knife, I know where I stand."
"He died of a broken heart, Oskar," Max Liebermann said, adjusting his spectacles as he stepped into the cramped carriage.
Oskar scoffed, "The Ministry isn't known for its romanticism, Max. He was healthy, wealthy, and had no enemies."
In a tense finale beneath the towering Ferris wheel, Max had to use his own knowledge of psychoanalysis to "awaken" Oskar from a similar hypnotic trap set by the killer. As the sun rose over the Danube, the "dream-slayer" was led away in irons.
