Review
The latest offering from the author of The Psalm Killer, a 1996 bestseller, is for those who like their thrillers exceedingly intricate. An octogenarian who worked for a corrupt American spymaster in World War II receives a package that is supposed to scare him and thrusts him back into the shady European world of long ago, where he joins other past players involved in secret deals dating back to the Third Reich, making money out of commercial assets and supposedly saving Jews even as Eichmann extended his extermination to Budapest. While this is no Fatherland, it has plenty of intrigue and dirty dealings evolving down to the present day, but the author has strained too hard and lost narrative drive in the patchwork of information dripped to the reader.
In this gripping and disturbing thriller Chris Petit poses and answers the question: how many moves does it take to get from Switzerland's Nazi gold to Britain's Kurdish refugees? Skilfully weaving fact and fiction, Petit takes Swiss neutrality during the Second World War as the starting point for an exploration of German genocide and its legacy in the modern world. The novel opens with Joe Hoover, an 80-year-old who's argued with just about everyone in his family. Fate shakes him up and gives him a purpose when he catches a CNN report about the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant. He recognizes Willi Schmidt, a shoe salesman who played both sides during the war and has prospered in the aftermath. Hoover, a former wartime US Intelligence agent, receives a book through the post, a thriller designed to dissuade him from becoming involved, but which has the opposite effect. His story is intercut with that of a young undercover British journalist, Vaughan, investigating the trade in Kurdish refugees. The parallels Petit draws between the stateless Kurds and the Jews are alarming and totally convincing. At times the novel reads like a history, complete with footnotes. But the author creates characters the reader will identify with and scenes of attention-grabbing tension. Petit deals with the most fundamental of all conflicts, good versus evil. The underlying message of the novel is that while the Second World War seemed to change the world for the better, the truth is less encouraging. For those who like to be educated as well as entertained, this is a deeply satisfying read. (Kirkus UK)
Metro
‘A fascinatingly complex and paranoid espionage narrative, with intensely focused prose... a fine novel that puts Petit in the first rank of his genre’
See all Product Description
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home
