A powerfully atmospheric thriller set during the Cold War from the internationally acclaimed author of "The Bridge of Sighs". Eastern Europe, 1965, and Security Officer Brano Sev, a secretive member of his country's homicide department, has returned home in disgrace from a posting to Austria. As a punishment he is sent to the backwoods village of his birth to interrogate a potential defector - only to find himself framed for murder. Assuming this is part of a covert plan devised by his bosses, he allows himself to be pushed into a dramatic flight to the west and the life of an exile in Vienna, a city teeming with scheming expatriates, spies and old enemies. But Brano soon finds himself lost in a maze of conflicting interests where love and friendship conceal treachery, and where the Cold War game of bluff and double bluff leaves him manoeuvering in the dark. And, in the end, he learns that loyalty to the cause might be the biggest crime of all. "The Vienna Assignment" is a powerful, atmospheric thriller, which perfectly captures the paranoia of Cold War Europe and the terrible dangers facing a man caught up in a game whose rules are constantly changing - with deadly consequences.