Most honourable Procurator Stiffeniis,

            You talents have been brought to Our attention by a gentleman of eminence, who believes that you alone are capable of resolving a situation which holds Our beloved Königsberg in a grip of terror. All Our faith and consideration are due to the notable personage who suggested your name, and that same faith and consideration now resides in you. We have no reason to doubt that you will accept this Royal Commission, and act accordingly with all haste. The fate of the city lies in your hands.

--King Frederick Wilhelm III

 

It has been years since Immanuel Kant’s landmark philosophical work, Critique of Pure Reason, brought him fame throughout Europe and made him Königsberg’s best-known citizen. Now, rumors have begun to surface of a new work by this aging but still acute mind. Yet unlike his earlier work, this book will not examine the mind of the average man, but the mind of the serial killer.

 Hanno Stiffeniis, a young magistrate, has been called to Königsberg to assist in the investigation of an enigmatic string of murders. Is it part of a plot formed by Napoleon’s spies to undermine the Prussian king or the work of a solitary, unknown killer? The case would seem unsolvable, were it not for the assistance and unmatched intellect of his mentor, Immanuel Kant. Together Stiffeniis and the elderly, eccentric philosopher must track down the killer who has the city of Königsberg by the throat.

Hugely atmospheric, entertaining, and intelligent, Critique of Criminal Reason marks the outstanding debut of a new name in historical fiction.

"Philosophy professor Gregorio delivers a stellar debut, a mystery set in 1804 that cunningly incorporates the ideas of the great thinker Immanuel Kant into a twisty, fast-moving whodunit plot. Wisely, the elderly Kant is not the main focus, instead serving as the cryptic mentor to a young rural Prussian magistrate, Hanno Stiffeniis, who receives a royal summons to Knigsberg to take over the search for a serial killer who has spread terror in that city. The dead, found without a visible wound, are rumored to have been victims of the devil, and the supernatural aspects of the crimes only heighten the level of fear in an area of Prussia already on edge because of the expected arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte's invading army. Admirers of quality intellectual fiction should embrace this book, with its pitch-perfect period detail and psychologically complex protagonist. Hopefully, readers won't have to wait long for a sequel. Foreign rights sold in 11 countries." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Michael Gregorio's first novel, 'Critique of Criminal Reason,' is one of those literary thrillers that come along every year or two to provide both intellectual and visceral pleasures for readers who neither move their lips nor fear weighty concepts. In it we learn that modern criminal investigation was invented not by Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin in Paris in the 1840s or Arthur Conan Doyle's... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Sherlock Holmes in London in the 1880s, but in the Prussian city of Konigsberg in 1804 by that incomparable genius ... well, if you paid attention in philosophy class you already will have guessed his name.

A young magistrate named Hanno Stiffeniis is inexplicably summoned by King Frederick Wilhelm III to leave his village and journey to Konigsberg to investigate a series of murders. Four people are dead, and panic grips the city. Many think the Devil is the killer. Others suspect French terrorists, sowing unrest before a feared invasion by Napoleon's army. Stiffeniis checks into an inn, where a serving boy offers him information, only to be killed. The magistrate is baffled, both by the crimes and by his role in the case, but then he learns that the king has summoned him at the insistence of his old friend and teacher, that great champion of Reason and Logic, Immanuel Kant.

Kant is almost 80 and frail, but his mind is agile. He seems to regard the murders as an intrusion by Chaos into his beloved city and to believe that he and Stiffeniis can, by the application of Reason, restore order. The philosopher had invited Stiffeniis 'to prove that I was the first of a new breed of investigative magistrates, that I was capable of employing a totally revolutionary technique involving methods that had never been used before in the fight against the worst of all crimes.' And yet Kant surprises his friend by summoning an 'infamous necromancer,' who claims to speak to the dead, to examine a corpse. And when the younger man supports a political motive for the killings, Kant offers another: 'The sublime pleasure of killing.' Or, as he adds, 'Logic and Rationality do not guide the human heart, though they may explain its passions.'

Soon the reader is swept along not only by additional murders but also by prose that is both richly atmospheric and heavy with dread. The story takes place in February 1804, and the terrible Prussian winter is vividly presented: 'Lashing rain by day, biting frost by night. And then, snow. More snow than I had ever seen before.' Amid swirling fog and bitter cold, Gregorio paints Konigsberg not as a center of enlightenment but as Hell on Earth. One horrid image follows another. A doctor applies massive leeches to a patient who soon dies. Human heads float in bottles. A soldier's face is hideously deformed by smallpox. An army deserter is beaten to death by other soldiers. Criminals are tortured and sent to be slaves in Siberia. Giant rats are pitted against one another like fighting cocks. A man is devoured by wolves. A suicide dies slowly after eating broken glass. We can only agree when Stiffeniis moans, 'Everything in Konigsberg seemed to be tainted, sick, removed from the normal light of day.'

Such lurid scenes may drive away some readers, but the writing is powerful. And when he wants to, Gregorio, a professor of philosophy who lives in Italy, can write quite graceful prose: 'Outside, sunbeam shafts filtered weakly through a web of gossamer clouds which extended in flimsy strands to the very rim of the earth. Occasional flakes of snow swirled in the air like autumn leaves on the wings of a piercing cold wind. Spread out below us lay the glistening slate roofs and the soaring church spires of Konigsberg. Beyond, the sea stretched to the horizon in thousands of acres of rumpled grey silk.' His story, however, is more concerned with madness and murder most foul than with sunbeams and church spires.

Even the great philosopher is shaken to his core. 'I mean to say that the further I progress in this experiment, the more I understand that Reason operates on the surface alone. What happens beneath the surface shapes events. The Imponderable overrules us all. For the first time in my life, I can feel the invincible strength of blind Destiny.' Poor Stiffeniis, who wants only to return to his wife and children, finds himself thinking the unthinkable: Could the sainted Immanuel Kant somehow have been involved in these murders? In its final pages, this immensely readable book falters with an ending that I found unconvincing. But others may find it just dandy, and either way 'Critique of Criminal Reason' (a play, as you surely grasp, on Kant's own 'Critique of Pure Reason') is an impressive piece of intellectual mayhem." Reviewed by Patrick Anderson, whose e-mail address is mondaythrillers(at symbol)aol.com, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"A sweeping and brilliantly detailed read. . . . Gregorio threads philosophical underpinnings through his dark narrative with genuine assurance."

---"Crime Time "(UK)

Michael Gregorio is a professor of philosophy. He lives in Italy.