Vienna 1894. Augustin Rothmayer, the oddball gravedigger from Vienna’s Central Cemetery, is approached by Inspector Leopold von Herzfeldt with an unusual favor: he needs Augustin to teach him everything he knows about preserving a dead body, information vital to a new investigation. Opening an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, employees of Vienna’s Museum of Art History have discovered the well- (and quite recently) preserved body of Alfons Strössner, famed professor of Egyptology. Some believe that the professor was the victim of an ancient curse. But neither Rothmayer nor von Herzfeldt give credence to such superstitious rumors. They are certain it was murder. The trail to unmask a killer leads them to fin-de-siecle Vienna’s unscrupulous upper class and to some eccentric and unusual places, including “mummy parties” and human zoos. 

Vienna, 1893. A gravedigger at the city’s famous Central Cemetery, Augustin Rothmayer is an unorthodox yet highly educated oddball who finds solace amongst the dead, as well as in writing the pages of the first almanac of his profession. But his fragile peace is abruptly disturbed when young inspector Leopold von Herzfeldt, an ambitious young transfer from Graz, arrives in need of help from someone expert in death. No one knows the subject better than Augustin Rothmeyer. A superstitious killer is on the loose. His victims include several maids, each brutally staked. Recognizing the killer is using an ancient ritual for keeping the undead buried, the gravedigger joins the inspector on a journey that will take them deep into the underworld of their glamorous cosmopolitan city.