Death Waltz in Vienna is a novel of both suspense and romance set in the capital of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire in the years prior to World War I. Suspence because Army captain Ernst von Falkenburg has just one week to clear himself of charges of treason that will otherwise cost him his life; romance because of the relationship he develops in that time with a beautiful woman who not merely provides him with indispensable assistance - at the risk of her life - but who shows him for the first time that he is capable of love. The action moves across the whole panorama of early 20th century Vienna, taking the reader through elegant salons and low dives, Vienna's most fashionable brothel and the imperial palace, and climaxes in a duel to the death and an epilogue set in Vienna's Central Cemetery.