Vilmos Kondor
Kondor has written a trilogy of historical thrillers about the fictional Wertheimer family's almost century-long affiliation with the Holy Crown of Hungary; a trilogy of contemporary police procedurals with political overtones featuring Detective Tibor Ferenczy; and a short novel, Az otthontalanság otthona (The home of homelessness), the income from which he donated to a charity that supported the migrants who arrived in Hungary during the crisis in 2015.
In 2022 he published the first of a series of mystery novels set in an alternate reality version of 20th century history, in which following the end of World War II Hungary does not become a communist Eastern Bloc nation, but rather develops into an independent and successful Switzerland-like capitalist country.
A Jewish girl is found dead in Budapest in 1936, and Zsigmond Gordon sets out to solve a murder that everyone else in his soon-to-be Fascist country wants to leave buried.
The story is set in the fall of 1939, a couple of weeks after the outbreak of World War II, and features Zsigmond Gordon and Sándor Nemes, a retired detective.
Hungary is about to get drawn into World War II when Zsigmond Gordon is asked to do something important for his country, and sets out to catch a deadly spy in war-torn Europe, only to find the traitor in Budapest in 1943.
If any of you wish to relive Hungary as it was in the 1940s, then by all means pick up Vilmos Kondor’s latest novel, which not only reveals practical espionage facts, but also depicts the operation and circumstances reigning within the secret services of a country being driven into war."
Even though the girl turns out to be someone else, Gordon – along with Krisztina – hops on the last train to Budapest, where a revolution has just started, tanks are rolling onto the streets, and people are dying by the hundreds.
But Gordon is interested only in finding his daughter, and the dangerous killer who tries to stay hidden while chaos ensues on the streets of a city that is fighting for its independence and freedom.
This novel is the prequel to Budapest Noir, which sheds light on Gordon Zsigmond's youth, the years following the stock market crash, and the journalist's first case in Pest.
Gordon is working as a journalist for Az Est, until one scorchingly hot day, in Tabán, an actor and stockbroker named Szatmári is found dead, and clues lead to a notorious American fraudster.
While gathering material under cover, he soon stumbles upon a wider crime conspiracy, and quickly maneuvers himself into a situation where, if he doesn’t play his hand carefully, he will never live to write another article.
But in October 1944 all three are in danger at the same time, as the regent's son is kidnapped from under his nose, Hungary withdraws from the war (if only for a few hours), and the threat of an Arrow Cross Fascist coup becomes a chilling reality.
A koronaőr második tévedése (The Crown Guard’s Second Mistake) Published in 2014 by Agave Könyvek At the end of April 1919, people in Budapest had given up even the semblance of a normal life.
He shares his not very comfortable apartment with his wife and young son, but his calm bourgeois life unexpectedly disrupted by a diary that arrives in the mail that reveals a complicated story revolving around the mysterious disappearance of the ancient Holy Crown of Saint Stephen during Hungary’s War of Independence in 1848-49 and its equally mysterious reappearance in 1867—just in time for the coronation of the Austrian emperor Franz Josef as King of Hungary.
The manhunt takes place in revolutionary nests, politicians' hideouts and dark corner pubs, while disaster tourists in party buses roam the streets of Budapest.
Örvényben (In a Vortex) Published in 2021 by Libri Könyvkiadó 1989 was memorable for the newly-graduated detective Tibor Ferenczy: not only did the Kádár system collapse, but he found himself in the middle of a love triangle.
This new series of mystery novels shares some aspects with the speculative fiction genre and is set in an alternate reality version of 20th century history in which Hungary negotiates a separate peace at the end of World War II and does not fall under Soviet control.
The head of the Budapest Police Department, János Kádár, is impatient for results and assigns the case to the young and talented detective Albert Nemes, who is joined by an eccentric Scottish colleague, but the solution to the mystery must be sought in dark secrets from World War II.
The American-born Gold medal contender of the Hungarian swimming team, Ike "Johnny" Wilkerson, dives into the Olympic pool only to sink dead to its bottom a few seconds later.
The fact that a Transylvanian terrorist group takes responsibility for the crime hints at a political motive, but the poisons found in the diver's body lead investigators Albert Nemes and his new colleague to suspect otherwise.
