|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
In this third installment in the Willi Kraus series, Willi has fled Germany with his family for Paris following the Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Despite being the most famous police detective in Berlin, and despite having been awarded the Iron Cross for his exploits during the late war, Willi is a Jew and thus undesirable in the new Germany. France is not, however, a place of easy refuge. Willi may stay, but without proper papers, he is unable to work legally; under-the-counter employment runs the risk of his being expelled back to Germany, with dire consequences. So he is grateful for whatever jobs he can get more or less safely - attaching glass eyes in fox stoles, for example, or doing a bit of surveillance for a dubious private detective agency. He is set to following a young man, a student, and although he observes him acting suspiciously, Willi cannot work out what he is up to before the lad winds up murdered in the Métro, dying in Willi's arms.
Before he knows it, Willi, rather than trying to get by unnoticed, finds himself swept up into the higher circles of power, befriended by a flamboyant financier, André Duval, enjoying a Bastille Day party atop the posh Hotel Lutetia in the company of the likes of Leon Trotsky and Georges Simenon, not to speak of the French prime minister, Édouard Daladier. The story has taken a sharp right turn in another direction, one in which Willi is embroiled in a series of events based (if somewhat loosely) on an infamous financial scandal, the Stavisky affair. At the centre of the scandal, a kind of Ponzi scheme, was one Alexandre Stavisky, the prototype for Duval in this novel. A charmer, a rogue, the collapse his financial manipulations brought about was responsible for the resignation of one French premier and for the right-wing riots that brought down Daladier.
All of which brings me to the real difficulty with this novel. The Stavisky affair is not familiar enough to a contemporary American audience to be treated as loosely as it is here. Grossman carelessly rearranges the timeline to suit his narrative and retains a few real names while re-christening most of the other actors and political groups in the historical scandal for no particularly good reason. I suspect that very few who pick this book up will have the slightest notion of the quite intriguing and still contentious events on which it is based. As a consequence of the scandal, France was left politically divided in the critical years leading up to the Second World War, and that was by no means inconsequential.
What responsibility does a novelist have toward his source material? Though many, like CJ Sansom, Philip Kerr and Robert Harris, take very seriously the task of informing readers while still entertaining them, others quite properly are content simply with evoking a period flavour as a backdrop to the mystery that they are unfolding. It does not appear that Grossman was exactly sure of what sort of book he had in mind. His attention to period detail is sometimes uncertain and often consists of mere name dropping (he frequently lines up a series of famous names and pours them all a drink, whether or not they could or would be present in the same room at the same time). On the other hand, his approach to the Stavisky scandal is slapdash at best. Matters might have been improved with an afterword outlining the historical basis for the novel's events and pointing interested readers toward useful source material.
Judged simply as a period thriller, the book is less than persuasive. Its protagonist, Willi Kraus, never quite comes into focus - at times, an angst-ridden introvert, at others, an action figure, quick with both fists and feet. Sometimes, he is the astute detective, at others, almost clueless. His affair with a twenty-one-year-old cross between Sally Bowles and Mata Hari does not enhance our regard for either his taste or his judgement.
The earlier two novels in the series, THE SLEEPWALKERS and especially CHILDREN OF WRATH have been widely praised. In these, Willi is to be found in his native city, Berlin, where he seems to be on surer ground, despite the Nazis. Perhaps Paul Grossman might find a way to get him back there before Hitler makes it all impossible. He does not seem to be cut out for the City of Light.
§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, February 2014
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
|
