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So why can I like an author's work so much one time and dislike it so much the next time? It's a different sort of book, it's true but I started out liking CAVALCADE and felt my interest fade away until at the end, I really wasn't invested in the book at all. I hurried to finish it. CAVALCADE is the third in this new-ish series by Walter Satterthwait. Set in Europe in the 1920s, this book involves two Pinkerton agents, the laconic Phil Beaumont and young Englishwoman Jane Turner. Their assignment? They've come to Germany to investigate what is apparently an assassination attempt on Herr Adolf Hitler, who was shot at while holding a secret meeting in a park. The premise seemed awfully iffy, but I was willing to go along. The two agents are handed a difficult assignment -- there are only a handful of people who know about the meeting, they all have the same theory, the same story. Beaumont and Turner have lots of problems; Jane speaks the language, which helps tremendously but there are few people that they can trust to give them straight stories without them being tempered by speeches about "the Reds did it" and the extreme ugliness of the anti-Semitism of the times, which is growing like crazy. When I read this book, I was at the same time reading another book about the Nazis and anti-Semitism and the issues that led to the Holocaust and World War II. I found that in CAVALCADE it was so very easy to hate people because they were so broadly painted. Absolutely true there were people like Cosima Wagner, and the entire family, painted as a poisonous bunch of worshippers at the grave of 'the Master' (even his son refers to him that way?) but it makes it difficult for me to get these people. When they're portrayed as not all evil, I could understand what led them to support the Nazi cause. But here, so many of them seem so insane, so slaveringly gung-ho about Teutonic Knights and "it's the fault of the Jews" and on and on, so that they don't come across as believable. There are some interesting and dimensional types -- a couple of Germans who spent time in an English POW camp during the first world war are well drawn. And Beaumont works. But I don't get the point of Jane -- her contributions as an agent or as a character in the book. Throughout the book, Jane Turner is writing letters to a friend; it's a sort of hokey narrative, telling her what just happened, so that we don't get an every other chapter "he said she said" but it felt phony to me. She seems like window-dressing; except in a meeting she has with Hitler. Again, what is portrayed may be true, but it was grotesque and loathsome. I'm probably way too influenced by modern communications and modern day politics, but seeing this horrific creepy man as a savior? Even back in 1923. I either could not buy it or would not, or rather the author did not convince me. The solution of the mystery, for me was so poorly done. I cannot say more for it would give too much away and you'd hate me. But I really expected more of this author. About two-thirds of the way through CAVALCADE, I realized I was bored; it seemed like there wasn't enough going on (if you took away the trappings of the letters, and showing that the National Socialist party had specific goals and a certain cant that was repeated) then it was a relatively simply story. That didn't work for me at all. My advice? Read MISS LIZZIE. It's probably harder to find but it's an awfully good book (and see Maddy van Hertbruggen's review on this site).
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, January 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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