In the last days of World War I, Hungary's 1,000 year-old kingdom lay in ruins. But its greatest challenges were still to come. One of them was named Bela Kun.
Once investigators had descended on the village, many women were desperate to stop graves from being disturbed and bodies being exhumed. They surely did not want autopsies, but many also had more immediate concerns about leftover arsenic that had been buried with the victims. They knew once the coffin was popped open, there it would be.
Back in — 2014? 2015? — two dear friends of mine put me in touch with a dear friend of their’s, New Yorker cartoonist and snowman expert Bob Eckstein, who was putting together a book on the world’s greatest bookstores, which he would title “The World’s Greatest Bookstores.”
Metered parking in Szolnok involved paying at the nearest stand, then displaying the receipt on the dash. Anyone familiar with parking in Vienna prior to parking apps —which required the same amount of paperwork as divorce filing or congressional bill passage, plus a race against time to the nearest Tabak shop to get the forms—will appreciate the straightforward efficiency of this system.
These long-tailed mayflies are mostly extinct but still found along the Tisza. Their yearly mating is dramatic and always draws a crowd, and did back in Prosecutor Kronberg's day, as well.
Thrilled to have been given the coveted starred review by Publishers Weekly.
“Reviews are written by experts in the book's genre or field, and are published anonymously in Publishers Weekly magazine and on publishersweekly.com. Superlative books may receive the coveted PW star, an unbiased indication of truly outstanding quality.”
“Dandy would trot off, tail wagging, toward the merchants who had set up at the weekly market on the square. He would dodge under the baskets and bags of shoppers, scoot past the tub makers and the children jockeying for bottles of homemade lemonade. He’d pass under the Austrian tightrope walker, who had fastened his highwire to the Hotel Hungarian King and strung it all the way across to the County Hall."
This is the soup can I mentioned in an earlier post. It’s a peach can, actually. Used as an ashtray. It was just outside my apartment door in Szolnok, in the hallway next to the elevator. I used to imagine how it had come to be there. Some guy standing around smoking and thinking to himself “I’m tired of tapping butts into my hand every time I come out to have a smoke,” then racing back into his kitchen to dig through the trash to find an empty peach can he could nail to the wall.
A couple of years ago, the local paper in Szolnok marked the 90th anniversary of the “Arsenic Trials” by running a full-page feature on John (Janos) Kronberg, the celebrated attorney who lead the investigation and prosecution of the women. The case would define his career.
I won’t ever forget the first drive to Szolnok to dig into the material. I had set out before dawn from my house in Austria in my beloved red Peugeot 207 (name: Francois).
