The Shadow of Death
Audiobook
The Shadow of Death
The castle ruins hide a long-buried secret
One reckless punch and a few false accusations were all it took for historian Záviš Brieftrager to be forced to trade his teaching post at Charles University for a menial job at a historic restoration company. But even on the excavations at Dívčí Kámen, the ruins of the Rožmberk family seat near České Budějovice, he finds no peace.
The discovery of an old skull might not mean anything – if it weren't followed by other remains of a clearly more recent date. Could they belong to the farmer Antonín Dvořák, who was supposedly taken away from nearby Holubov in a black limousine by members of the StB in the 1950s? If so, how did they get to the castle? And what connects their owner to the fate of a medieval nobleman?
Záviš is failing to fix his own life, but perhaps he could at least solve the mystery of the two skeletal remains. Yet the deeper he delves into the case, the more he understands the futility felt by Oldřich of Rožmberk when he tried to capture foreign spies at Dívčí Kámen in the fifteenth century.
At the same time, he discovers that not everyone wants the truth to come out. Even if it means silencing Záviš…
A thrilling detective story about deep injustices, statute-barred crimes, and well-guarded secrets.
Egon Trnka
Egon Trnka (born 1963) was born and lives in Prague. Although he studied history at Charles University, he did not remain in the field professionally. In the past, he has worked as a civil servant, a journalist, and a seasonal worker. He currently works in a multinational corporation and channels his love of history into his literary work. He began writing during the communist era, but his first attempts did not pass through the sieve of contemporary censorship and ended up in a drawer. Although he didn't find time for writing for a long while after that, he never completely gave up on his dream of becoming a writer. He eventually fulfilled it through the crime novel series, Místo činu (Crime Scene). Egon Trnka lives in a small flat in Prague's Holešovice district, where he is kept company by pesky pigeons and a cat too lazy to scare them away.
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