Budapest Protocol, The [Paperback]

The Budapest Protocol sounds like a cheesy Robert Ludlum thriller from the 1970's. The synopsis makes it sound like a paranoid anti-EU tract. Its neither of these things. For 90% of its length its an intelligent, complex 'what if' political thriller set in and around modern-day Hungary.

Written by Adam LeBor, a journalist, the heroes of the book are two journalists who uncover a plot, hatched by a cabal of Nazis and Swiss Bankers at the end of WWII to acheive via political and economic means what the Third Reich couldn't using military might; namely the takeover of central Europe. If this sounds far fetched (and to be honest it is) then LeBor's approach for the first 90% of the book isn't. For most of its length The Budapest Protocol is an intelligently written, soundly plotted political thriller that eschews the sort of OTT action that many contemporary thiller writers use to pep up their novels. There are no remorseless assassins, armies of henchmen, super cool secret agents or other thriller cliches on display here. Just decent characterisation, logical plot developments and pacing that if not turbo-charged is fast enough to hold your attention.

Despite the far fetched conspiracy angle there is also a strong sense of realism to much of the book. The political events that occur, whilst entirely fictional, do have the ring of the possible rather than the improbable about them. Equally the Hungary LeBor depicts, although again given a 'what if' spin, also feels real, the author using his first hand knowledge of the country and its culture to paint a vivid picture of the place and its peoples. All this, along with the solid characterisation and the generally logical plotting, helps mitigate against a central premise that is somewhat hard to swallow.

That is until close to the end of the book when everything gets a bit silly. Maybe LeBor didn't think there had been enough 'action' up until then, although I hadn't found that to be a problem. For whatever reason having avoided thriller cliches for almost the entire length of the book the author starts introducing the sort of hackneyed plot devices that just serve to highlight how faintly ridiculous the central premise of the book is. I can't say much more for fear of spoiling the book for future readers but having spent so much of the book managing to make the concept of a devious and expertly hidden Nazi conspiracy to take over contemporary Europe almost plausible, to then reveal that the apparently intelligent and cunning conspirators have given their organisation the sort of sinister name that would set of alarm bells left right and centre, or any name at all, just seems stupid. The same goes for a character who arrives on the scene late in the day, is meant to be the sadistic and evil mastermind behind everything, but just brings up thoughts of Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove.

The worst thing is that all this is so unecessary and damages what was otherwise a first rate thriller. Its not enough to sink the book entirely, which is still worthy of four stars and I would recommend to anyone looking for a smart, contemporary, original thriller. Its just a shame that after managing to avoid many of the pitfalls writers in this genre fall into Adam LeBor felt it necessary to resort to cheap cliches at the end.

I really wanted to like this thriller, but in the end I felt that it had failed to deliver, which was a great shame.

Adam LeBor is a very good journalist, and his book on Hitler's Swiss bankers is well worth reading Hitler's Secret Bankers: The Myth of Swiss Neutrality During the Holocaust - nailing as it does so well - the myth of the 'neutral' Swiss during WW2. He also knows eastern Europe and Hungary in particular very well - writing for The Economist, amongst others, on the country.

But as a novelist I think he has a way to go.

If you've not read the book and you're going to, I apologise now for any plot spoilers. The book's main hero is a journalist, troubled by the memory of the translator he was unable to save during the Bosnian war.

It is a story of a right-wing Hungarian government, carrying out racist sterilisation experiments on the country's Gypsies or Roma population - all set against a background of supposed extremist Muslim attacks on various European countries.

We have the spectre of a looming European super-state - elections are to be held for the newly-cerated and very powerful post of European President.

And, gradually we learn that pulling the strings behind the scnes is a shadowy group of neo-Nazis, determined to succeed where old Adolf and his ilk failed in 1939-45.

It may be that there were just too many ideas jostling for attention in the book, any one of which would have been fine as a main plot-line. Take the neo-Nazis - we could have had a book just about them - joining works like Glen Meade's Brandenburg or Daniel Easterman's The Seventh Sanctuary to name but two. We could have had a thriller on the racist treatment of Roma in central and eastern Europe, or a thriller on the European super-state, like Andrew Roberts's The Aachen Memorandum

Ultimately LeBor never quite manages to make his characters lift off the page. For me they were all autmatons, just going through the motions. It was all a bit too mechanistic.

By far the best and most moving were the appendices that LeBor adds at the end, particularly the meeting of Nazi industrialists at the end of WW2, planning for an underground post-war existence.

The ingredients were there for an excellent thriller, it just didn't quite deliver. Sorry.

As a thriller this is solid, and rather old fashioned. The main interest lies in the setting, Budapest, the analysis of anti-Semitism and racism against the Roma in Hungary, and the depiction of far right politics in a near future Europe. Once its premises have been established, the novel plays out comparatively predictably, if pleasingly. I agreed with other reviewers who didn't care for the book's ending - but I think the same is true of many thrillers.

I bought this because I had been impressed by LeBor's book about Jaffa, `City of Oranges', and had also found his journalism interesting. Although I enjoyed this thriller, I found myself thinking that I'd actually prefer to read a non-fiction book about the rise of the European far right, which is all too real, although less sensational than events in `The Budapest Protocol'.