When else is the right time to crack open some pretty chilling suspenseful stories than on cold winter evenings? David Urban, whose books read themselves, can be a great helper, almost the director of yours. This year’s winner of the Jiří Marek award for the best detective story of 2022 and nominee for the Magnesia Litera 2022 award approaches his work as carefully as he does his investigations. “Every time I think about the main skeleton of the story and the point. I don’t have an exact plot in mind and I only create it while writing, but I always know where my characters have to go in each chapter,” he said in an interview pro server Kultura21.
David Urban’s stories are also available as audiobooks. | Euromedia Group
He also revealed to Tom how pleased he is with the readers’ response to the award-winning Game of Survival. “They are good so far, and according to individual internet book databases, most people like them. It was received as well by my police colleagues as my short story collections and first novel,” said Urban. So when you think about a Christmas present for lovers of serious crime stories, you can reach for this book, the latest one called Déjà vu, or their audiobook versions, which Filip Švarc read for Témbr. We offer a sample of the Game of Survival in the gallery, and we will tell you what awaits the reader on their pages.
A game of survival leads him into a situation where innocent fun turns into a dangerous obsession… Parents don’t understand her, children love her. Monster hunters is a game that schoolchildren spend their days with. They have to catch imaginary monsters to advance to the next level and surpass their classmates. But for that you need to be in a certain place at a certain time. Even if it was in the middle of the night in a dark forest. But what if something more than just a painted figure lurks among the trees? Detectives begin to ask themselves the same question when they find a severed leg in Klánovické les. There is no sign of the rest of the body, but then more people start disappearing…
The novel Déjà vu then brings us to the moment when the body of a homeless man in an advanced stage of decomposition is found in a dilapidated house on the outskirts of the city in the middle of a harsh winter. The crime scene looks like something out of a horror movie, and Lt. Eda Braun can’t help but feel like he’s seen a similar scene before. It’s like deja vu. As they dive into the investigation with their colleague Diana Černa, they find out that it wasn’t just an assumption – someone really died in the house. Is this a coincidence or a malicious intent? The cases remain shrouded in mystery just like the old house. However, the criminologists must untangle the tangle of questions in time, because if it really is the work of a murderer, another innocent person could soon come to harm…
David Urban was born in 1973 in Prague. He has worked for the Prague police all his life. His interests include reading books, comics and playing computer games. He likes climbing walls and doing archery. | AR: David Urban
“In the stories, I try to truthfully describe police work and the behavior of detectives, so that they are not flawless and infallible. Sometimes they have good days, sometimes bad. In short, my police officers are ordinary people, just like in real life,” David Urban also said Kultura21 server. He does not deny that he is inspired by reality, but only with the admixture of his imagination do the stories come to life in a form that is devoured by the readers of each of them. In addition, he lets you see under the hood of a real investigation, the authenticity of which he relies on. All you have to do is see for yourself (or ears), it’s worth it. The author, who was fascinated by writing in his youth, knows how to tell stories.
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