Rating: 4/5
Review:
Good, but has its flaws
I thought many things about this book were very good. I like Brodrick's prose style, I think he deals with the moral issues around collaboration and the Holocaust well and unsensationally, and he can create a really convincing set of characters and places. The story of Anselm delving into events in wartime Paris is interesting and the present-day trial scenes are gripping and convincing.
However, I think Broderick would be much better off sticking to a more straightforward type of storytelling rather than trying to underpin the book with conventional Crime Thriller structures. Anselm's constant and transparent incorrect conclusions simply irritated me (as they did in The Day Of The Lie), the coincidences got a bit much, the tricks for concealment of evidence became more than a little implausible and the denouement seemed like a fusion of the climax of a Restoration comedy ("Brother!" "Father!" "Sister!" and so on) with one of Dickens's more sentimental deathbead scenes. I did find one aspect of it moving, but felt rather manipulated into it. And I found the final revelation, almost as a postscript, simply risible after all that had gone before - the book would have been much better and more believable without it.
I did enjoy this book. It's well-written and involving for much of its length, but a less convoluted plot would have been rather more effective, I think.
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