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Now Vyleta has released yet another novel, this time set in 1939 Vienna. It is just as chillingly well observed as his first novel, although it is more muted—or at least when it starts—than the Berlin story. Titled The Quiet Twin, is set in a block of apartments peculiar to continental Europe prior to WWII in which buildings are set around a central space. Berlin, for instance, was famous for its Hinterhöfe (rear courtyard), and most likely they were called that in Vienna as well. The idea was that those who were able to afford apartments with windows facing the street were of means and of "station" in life; the residents, whose windows faced the central courtyard, were of a lower station in society: the workers and even the dispossessed. It created a peculiar social mix that in a class-conscious European society merely emphasized the disparity between the haves and have-nots.

Vyleta's novel transports us into the tense atmosphere of 1939-Vienna, a year after the Anschluss (annexation). In this new world many people kept their heads down, their ears covered and their eyes shut. In that way they were not unlike many others in countries where the Nazis had become the master, including Germany. By turning inward, the population became an unwitting collaborator with the Nazis. If we did not already know this then Vyleta's tale makes it abundantly clear. Of course, there were also plenty of Austrians who welcomed the arrival or the election of the National Socialists, and who used their newly acquired positions to their advantage. This is, after all, not the world of Julie Andrews and the von Trapps. In the particular Viennese tenement where Vyleta has set his story, most tenants keep their heads down for reasons that slowly unfold as the tale progresses.

The Quiet Twin might be described as a historic mystery thriller, but I am loathe to classify Vyleta's book in this manner. There is something deeper going on. Both his novels are social and psychological studies without being so in an obvious manner. In Pavel & I the author explored the survival instinct after the breakdown of a city's social fabric following war, mixed with the intrigue of spies and the mounting tensions between former allies in a struggle to dominate Berlin. Some may point to Graham Greene here, but that writer actually experienced the world he wrote about. In The Quiet Twin a different kind of breakdown of the social fabric has occurred. Vienna is a place of rumors where dangers are whispered but remain unconfirmed. We, on hindsight, know that those rumors were either already true or eventually became reality, but the characters in this book are left to surmise about truth and lie.

To set the tone for his novel, Vyleta divided it into parts and sections with separate chapters. Part I is called Killers and before he starts the actual novel, he offers up a page about one of Germany's serial killers from the first half of the 20^th century. Readers, who think serial killers are peculiar to North America, will be enlightened here to an unfamiliar face of the supposedly orderly German world. Beneath the order lies a darker world in which serial killers are quite numerous prior to the ascent of the Nazis and even during the regime's early years. The biggest serial killer, of course, was the Austrian/German, Adolf Hitler, who directed others to do the killing for him, but the author leaves it to us to make that connection.

Part II is titled Marvels, Part III Cretins, and Part IV is called Whispers, Echoes. Each part and each section within these parts is fronted by one of these curious pieces of information about strange personalities or occurrences that have played a role in the formation of the German and Austrian psyche during the last century, and which still has an impact on the present.

The novel opens with an introduction to young Dr. Beer, who appears to be going out on a date, but one that never materializes. Instead he is called to see a young patient in his own building. She is Zuzka, the niece of the Zellenwarten (not dissimilar to the Communist Chinese "granny" block wardens), whose job it is to spy on his fellow tenants for the Nazis. A disgraced professor, Dr. Speckstein has regained some social standing through this minor role in the Party. Zuzka, it seems, suffers from strange afflictions that upset Speckstein's housekeeper, Frau Vesalius. It is through the young woman that Dr. Beer becomes aware of his fellow tenants who live in the less desirable apartments across the courtyard.

Zuzka, obviously bored with her existence in her uncle's apartment, has spent much time observing what goes on across that courtyard. She points out to Dr. Beer the collection of unusual characters who inhabit a very different world than theirs. Among them are a mime, who appears to be hiding someone; a Japanese trumpeter, who lives in a tiny attic; a little hunchbacked girl, Lieschen, who plays a fairly pivotal role in this book; her father, who is an alcoholic and whose wife abandoned him and the child; and the complex's janitor, who conducts a strange business in the basement of the building. Add to that mix the uncouth Detective Teuben, who seeks out Dr. Beer for help in forming a psychological profile of a killer. This boorish Nazi detective implies that one of the victims of this killer is Prof. Speckstein's ancient dog. Since profiling, using method formed through psychoanalysis, was forbidden under the Nazis, Teuben's unusual request adds an extra nuance to this novel.