Original title: Žádné dobré zprávy
Genre: detective novel
Publisher:
Host, 2025
Awards:
shortlisted for Magnesia Litera 2026 (Jablotron Litera for crime fiction category) – results to be announced on 18th April, 2026
Rights sold to:
Ukraine (Anetta Antonenko Publishers), Poland (Afera), Macedonia (Slavika Libris)
Superintendent Výrová is on the trail of a heartless serial killer.
The mugging of a student gone awry. The unpremeditated murder of a Ukrainian professor of history, who fled to the Czech Republic to escape the war. A frenzied attack on the regional manager of a security agency. Did a conspiracy theorist really die of natural causes? Are these events connected, or is this just a series of coincidences? Are there more such crimes? After the tragic outcome of her last case, former police superintendent Marie Výrová has undertaken to devote herself to her family and her teaching at the law faculty, and to get involved in no more investigations. But then an old friend calls with a request...
The novel No Good News is an engaging, intimate social drama infused with love, jealousy, sex, manipulation and hatred. It retains the unmistakable atmosphere of Olomouc’s historic squares, narrow streets and old university buildings. It also features uninviting, deserted roads between frozen fields, and mysterious buildings inhabited by “men who hate women”. Ferocious dogs, too. And evil that breeds evil. But also justice, which, together with the strong arm of the law, just about wins out in the end.
This topical, suspense-filled detective story is further evidence of why this popular author’s books enjoy enduring popularity in the genre. An engaging story, credible depictions of milieux and character, reflections on the contemporary world, and above all, stubborn but likeable Maria Výrová, who, even though she has left the police, still has all her abilities and indomitability.
Martin Stöhr, editor, Host Publishers
‘I don’t see detective stories as mere entertainments in which every problem is solved with the revelation of the perpetrator, before the whole is resolved in a happy ending,’ the author explains. ‘Detective stories should depict our present, and reasons and motives that lead people to commit crimes. They shouldn’t cast reality in a rosy light. I wrote No Good News with these thoughts in mind. The characters in the novel are fictional, but I wanted them to be people you know or might meet on the street. Or in the woods. Because they live in the same world as us.’
"In the first round of the presidential election, a person who believes that milk is produced in a cow’s stomach receives almost two million votes. And former police commissioner Marie Výrová realizes that the good news has run out that same day. Even the serial killer who attacks Marie in this sixth volume of stories about detectives from the elite Holy Trinity regional police unit (and also about academics from Olomouc University, where the chief protagonist lectures at the Law Faculty now that she has left the police) is driven by the signs of the times. For these are times filled with trauma and aggression, in which, among other things, men’s power over women is dwindling, which arouses anxiety and anger in some men. Fortunately, Marie has a refugee from Ukraine by her side – a courageous canine by the name of Buča. Olomouc literary scholar Michal Sýkora initially wrote academic studies on the foremost authors of Russian and American literature, as well as on literary, film and television detective stories. He also uses his knowledge of modern literary narrative techniques and the genre schemes employed in crime literature in his highly readable works of fiction, which he has been publishing since 2012. Based on the compelling constellation of investigators from Holy Trinity, he first constructed a masterfully entertaining version of the contemporary Czech police procedural. But his books did not stop there. The author’s latest novel combines various models of contemporary detective fiction, including a dark thriller in which the crime does not stem from the past, but from the political and ideological tensions of the present day."
Magnesia Litera 2026 panel statement
