The Ludwig Conspiracy

Oliver Potzsch is the author of the stand-alone thriller The Ludwig Conspiracy (#429).  He is also the author of the critically acclaimed Hangman's Daughter series which figures on my current "To Read" list.

To begin with, I certainly didn't know much about the last king of Bavaria, Ludwig II, other than the fact that he built Neuschwanstein Castle, model for Disney's fairytale castle centerpiece and subject of numerous photographs.  What I did not realize was that there is a controversy about exactly how Ludwig II died in 1887 - murder/suicide versus political assassination - and that there is a German cottage industry built around the varying conspiracy theories.  Mr. Potzsch's novel explores one such "what if?' theory when an antiquarian book seller in Munich suddenly finds himself in possession of volume written in code by Ludwig's assistant physician, a putative eye witness of those fateful events that June night.  If only he could stay safe long enough to decode the diary's contents...

I had the connections figured out in this one pretty early on, and spent most of my time reading this book waiting for the rest of the cast of characters to catch up.  Although the subject matter was interesting enough, I think the novel could have done with some judicious pruning.  At four hundred pages, I thought it was about a hundred pages too long.

I suppose that I'll still eventually read Mr. Potzsch's Hangman's Daughter series, but I won't be in any hurry to get to it.