Book review: Dohany Street

Dohany Street is the third outing for LeBor’s gypsy police detective Balthazar Kovacs, who is called in by a worried neighbour after her relative, a visiting Israeli historian, goes missing.

Kovacs is soon caught up in a mystery that involves the Hungarian prime minister, the country’s richest tycoon and the Israeli secret service. Unravelling the puzzle propels Kovacs on a descent into the brutalities of the Holocaust and the vicious treatment of the Budapest Jewish community by their fellow citizens.

All the expected thriller ingredients are there, including some genuinely exciting action scenes, while LeBor manages to suggest weightier themes without slackening the pace.

Now back in Britain, LeBor is an old Hungary hand, having worked as a Budapest-based foreign correspondent for almost three decades from 1991, and he is very good at conveying how this is a place where the past hangs around every corner. As one character puts it: “Everything in Hungary is a history seminar,”

And so what do we learn? JC readers will be aware that many of Budapest’s Jews were shot and bundled into the Danube by Nazi collaborators. Less well known might be the “Poraymus” (“devouring”), the genocide of the country’s gypsies under the Nazis.

As well as history lessons, a little culinary education is also on the menu, with LeBor name-checking several Hungarian delicacies — csirke paprikas (chicken paprika) may sound like standard fare in this part of the world, but how about turos palacsintas (sweet cheese pancakes served with a vanilla sauce) or pogacsas (savoury scones)?

Alan Montague is a former JC News Editor