The Death Instinct by Jeb Rubenfeld

I picked this book up because it is a sequel to 'The interpretation of murder', a historical novel that stars Sigmund Freud among others. Jeb Rubenfeld mixed historical fact with fiction in an entertaining manner in that book and he achieves the same feat here.

In The Death Instinct several apparently separate events occur and finally are found to be linked. The book opens with the bombing of Wall Street in September 1920. This historical event was the greatest act of terrorism in the USA until the bombing of the world trade centre nearly 75 years later. Rubenfeld has tried to be historically accurate here although in reality the real bombers were never caught.

Freud appears again and the plot also reaches the battlefields of the First World War and the anti-Semitic regions of Germany and Austria as the Nazi party rose to power. It is a bit like the Da Vinci Code in a way although this book is probably better written.

An entertaining read. Good for a holiday.