The Ludwig Conspiracy - Oliver Poetzsch

My father loaned this to me, along with some other books we’ll get to in due time, last week. It’s by the same author as the series of books about the hangman of Schongau and his daughter, a couple of which I’ve reviewed previously. This is set partially in the present, as a bookseller named Steven Lukas finds himself targeted by a couple of different groups over a small treasure chest. Within the chest is the coded diary of one Theodor Marot, who was assistant to the physician of Ludwig the II of Bavaria, whose death is apparently the subject of much discussion to this very day. The chest was hidden in Lukas’ bookstore by a professor who turns up dead shortly thereafter, and Lukas is swiftly on the run, aided (or dragged along) by the niece of the recently deceased. The diary in written in a specific shorthand, but then there are scattered words coded another way entirely, and the key to them lies somewhere within each of 3 castles Ludwig had built during his time (the excessive amount of money funneled into those projects being one of the things his ministers weren’t too pleased about).

I said the book was set partially in the present. It jumps back in time at regular intervals, to cover what is written in the diary. We experience the events as Steven deciphers and reads them, essentially. My dad wasn’t fond of this approach, feeling the moving back and forth threw off the pacing. I see what he means, though it doesn’t bother me as much. I do wonder which half he felt was more suspenseful (I didn’t ask because I hadn’t read the book yet). I lean towards the parts in the past, because even though we already know the ultimate fate for Ludwig, if not the precise circumstances, there’s still a greater sense of momentum to it, with Marot and the others loyal to the King rushing about trying to save Ludwig from those conspiring against him, and from his own self-imposed distance from reality. The present day section simply didn’t have the same energy, perhaps because the characters are simply retracing the steps already taken. The gradual romantic pairing between Lukas and Sara didn’t help; it felt obvious and forced, the chemistry the two each remark on in their internal narration did not come through in their dialogue.