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The Quiet Twin: A Novel Audiobook
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Vienna, 1939. Professor Speckstein's dog has been brutally killed, and he wants to know why. But these are uncharitable times, and one must be careful where one probes.
When an unexpected house call leads Dr. Beer to Speckstein's apartment, he finds himself in the bedroom of Zuzka, the professor's niece. Wide-eyed, flirtatious, and not detectably ill, Zuzka leads the young doctor to her window and opens up a view of their apartment block that Beer has never known. Across the shared courtyard there is nine-year-old Anneliese, the lonely daughter of an alcoholic. Five windows to the left lives a secretive mime who comes home late at night and keeps something—or someone—precious hidden from view. From the garret drifts the mournful sound of an Oriental's trumpet, and a basement door swings closed behind the building's inscrutable janitor. Does one of these enigmatic neighbors have blood on their hands?
Dr. Beer, who has his own reasons for keeping his private life hidden from public scrutiny, reluctantly becomes embroiled in an enquiry that forces him to face the dark realities of Nazi rule.
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“This book isn’t so much a murder mystery as a mood piece about how paranoia escalates as a totalitarian regime comes to power, and some of the novel’s best scenes underscore Dr. Beer’s anxiety as a result of the growing surveillance of the apartment…Vyleta knows how to create an oppressive atmosphere without making the prose feel bogged down…Evocative.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“I was pleased to encounter the dark excitement of Dan Vyleta’s The Quiet Twin…As in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, paranoia mounts…[A] tense, well-wrought novel.”
— Wall Street Journal -
“Vyleta carefully lays out the elements of a traditional mystery…and finds clever ways to subvert expectations.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“The novel pungently recreates the noxious ethos in which [Nazism] flourished, resembling Hitchcock’s Rear Window rescripted by Dostoevsky and Kafka.”
— Sunday Times (London) -
“A striking, pitch-perfect, wonderfully atmospheric, and beautifully written ensemble piece that subtly portrays a society on the brink of moral collapse.”
— Sunday Telegraph (London) -
“Vyleta builds an atmosphere of fear and paranoia…With The Quiet Twin, he proves he’s no one-book wonder.”
— Globe and Mail (Toronto) -
“A compelling rumination on watching and watchfulness, served up with Nabokovian glee.”
— Guardian (London) -
“Vital, deftly realized characters populate Vyleta’s simmering narrative…The Quiet Twin is a sharp and confident novel that captures the social paranoia and mistrust fomented by Nazism…Subtly engaging.”
— Independent (London) -
“Vyleta’s second novel is truly a work of art; his deft manipulation of narrative and characters (and readers), a master class in psychological sleight of hand.”
— National Post (Toronto) -
“Innocence and cunning, humour and pathos, sacrifice and cruelty—all operate side by side in a world gone wrong in this breathtaking page-turner.”
— Winnipeg Free Press -
“Beer is both an anomaly and the norm: a perceptive mind subdued by sour principles; a compassionate heart in a cowardly body. When push comes to shove, as it nearly always does, what good are thoughts against brute force?…Nimble, nuanced, fierce, scrupulous, [The Quiet Twin] makes a good case for the power of such thoughts.”
— Times Literary Supplement (London) -
“[Vyleta is] the heir of the throne left empty since the death of Graham Greene. Yes, he’s that damn good.”
— San Francisco Book Review -
“As Vyleta weaves his taut narrative, readers strive with Beer for that acuteness of vision necessary to anticipate and explain the ominous twists of events played out in the shadow of Nazi fanaticism. Dark and disturbing, a novel of rare sophistication.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“[A] captivating detective story…Readers will appreciate the novel’s well-crafted pathos, dark humor, and chills.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“Working primarily through mood, atmospherics, and the general air of malevolence with which he surrounds the action, Vyleta memorably conjures up the darkness both of the times and of the Nazi mind.”
— Library Journal
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About Dan Vyleta
Dan Vyleta is the son of Czech refugees who emigrated to Germany in the late 1960s. He holds a PhD in history from King’s College, Cambridge. Vyleta is the author of several novels, including Pavel & I; The Quiet Twin, which was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize; and The Crooked Maid, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the J. I. Segal Award. An inveterate migrant, Vyleta has lived in Germany, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He currently resides in Stratford-upon-Avon in England.
About Bronson Pinchot
Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.