Budapest Vice

by Vilmos Kondor

A border in chaos. A missing drug shipment. A city that no longer knows where its loyalties lie.

Budapest, September 1939. As Polish refugees pour across the Hungarian border, three Red Cross trucks carrying medical grade drugs disappear. Zsigmond Gordon, crime reporter for Magyar Nemzet, is there when the shipment vanishes — and once he starts asking questions, he is drawn into a world of illegal card dens, silent deals, and sudden violence.

At the same time, retired detective inspector Sándor Nemes receives an offer he cannot refuse. He is tasked with uncovering what happened to the missing drugs, but the case pulls him back into the moral filth of a city he thought he had left behind — and toward secrets darker than anything in his past.

When their investigations collide, Gordon and Nemes uncover a truth that makes justice fragile and revenge tempting.


Perfect for readers of Philip Kerr, Joseph Kanon, Alan Furst, and Volker Kutscher, and for anyone who enjoys atmospheric noir and meticulously researched historical crime fiction.

The follow-up to Vilmos Kondor’s landmark novel Budapest Noir — cited in The Cambridge Companion to World Crime Fiction — appears here for the first time in English, in an author-approved translation.

416 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 6, 2025

About the author

Vilmos Kondor is the internationally acclaimed creator of the Budapest Noir series and one of the major voices in contemporary European crime fiction. His debut novel Budapest Noir was first published in Hungary in 2008 and quickly became a landmark work, launching a seven-book cycle that blends hard-boiled storytelling with the turbulent history of mid-20th-century Hungary.

The series has been translated into fourteen languages, published in the United States, and adapted into a feature film. Kondor’s protagonist, crime reporter Zsigmond Gordon, investigates murder and corruption in a city caught between dictatorships, wars, and shifting political shadows — stories where history and noir meet on every page.

Kondor holds a degree from Sorbonne, and he is teaching physics and mathematics in a high school in western Hungary. When he is not working on a new novel, he enjoys long walks and making jams — especially on the days when the plot refuses to cooperate.