Dohany Street
By Adam LeBor
Head of Zeus, £18.99

The sight of ranks of black-shirted Hungary football fans at an international match at Wembley Stadium last year, and the violent scenes that accompanied them, did little to enhance their country’s image.

Add to that, the criticisms surrounding Hungary’s populist leader Viktor Orban, and anyone planning a European city break would be forgiven for not putting Budapest at the top of their list.

On balance, though, the city’s tourist trade might well benefit from Adam LeBor’s latest thriller set in the Hungarian capital. True, Dohany Street delves into Budapest’s murky wartime past and draws heavily on the tragic fate of the Jewish community.

But the book — and its title, which evokes the location of the biggest synagogue in Europe — also provides an appealing picture of present-day Budapest, vividly describing the atmosphere of its various districts and communities.

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