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The Statement
The hunt is on for an elusive Nazi war criminal in this “absorbing intellectual thriller that keeps you guessing . . . until the final page” (The New York Times).
For four decades Pierre Brossard has eluded capture as one of the most vicious SS officers in history. Condemned to death in absentia he’s tenuously protected by an intricate web of Nazi collaborators and an extreme right-wing faction of the Catholic Church. With nothing more than a suitcase and a prayer, Brossard seeks refuge in a monastery outside Salon-de-Provence. He knows the Committee for Justice is closing in. With every reason to fear his days are numbered, he realizes only one man can help him get away with murder: Commissaire Vionnet, a retired police chief who, forty years earlier, allowed Brossard to escape.
But two other men are collaborating as well: a hired assassin known only as T, and Cardinal Primate Delavigne, reformist of the postwar church. He’s as unstoppable as T, as ruthless as Brossard, and he can’t wait to play this game to its unpredictable end.
“An exciting, classic novel of hunter and hunted” inspired by a true story, The Statement was made into an award-winning film starring Michael Caine, Tilda Swinton, and Alan Bates (The Washington Post).
For four decades Pierre Brossard has eluded capture as one of the most vicious SS officers in history. Condemned to death in absentia he’s tenuously protected by an intricate web of Nazi collaborators and an extreme right-wing faction of the Catholic Church. With nothing more than a suitcase and a prayer, Brossard seeks refuge in a monastery outside Salon-de-Provence. He knows the Committee for Justice is closing in. With every reason to fear his days are numbered, he realizes only one man can help him get away with murder: Commissaire Vionnet, a retired police chief who, forty years earlier, allowed Brossard to escape.
But two other men are collaborating as well: a hired assassin known only as T, and Cardinal Primate Delavigne, reformist of the postwar church. He’s as unstoppable as T, as ruthless as Brossard, and he can’t wait to play this game to its unpredictable end.
“An exciting, classic novel of hunter and hunted” inspired by a true story, The Statement was made into an award-winning film starring Michael Caine, Tilda Swinton, and Alan Bates (The Washington Post).
258 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 4, 1995
90 people are currently reading
520 people want to read
About the author
Brian Moore
174 books168 followersBrian Moore (1921–1999) was born into a large, devoutly Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a surgeon and lecturer, and his mother had been a nurse. Moore left Ireland during World War II and in 1948 moved to Canada, where he worked for the Montreal Gazette, married his first wife, and began to write potboilers under various pen names, as he would continue to do throughout the 1950s.
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”
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October 19, 2021
I’m not normally a fan of the political thriller, but this was an entertaining enough effort from Brian Moore. It was his penultimate novel. He was a prolific author but this is only the second of his books that I’ve read. I really ought to find time for more.
Set in 1989, the plot is based around the hunt for a 70-year-old war criminal, Pierre Brossard, who during WW2 served in la Milice, a paramilitary group who served the collaborationist Vichy France regime. Although wanted for crimes against humanity, since the end of WW2 Brossard has been protected by conservative elements of the Catholic Church in France, who have allowed him to hide out in various monasteries. He finds though, that he has fewer and fewer protectors as the wartime generation passes on. A Colonel Roux of the Gendarmerie is on his trail, and so is an assassin from a mysterious group who aim to extract revenge for his wartime crimes. One effect of this is that the perspective shifts constantly between the three main protagonists as well as others. I mention that as I know some people don’t like that style of novel. I don’t mind it.
I did feel that Brossard was painted at times as a bit of pantomime villain. Not content with him as an extreme racist and anti-Semite (no doubt accurate for such a character), the author also portrays him being cruel to animals. At that point I felt myself thinking “OK. He’s the bad guy. I get the message.” Despite that, anyone looking for a political thriller could do worse than this book. At 250 pages it’s not overlong, and the author keeps up a lively pace throughout.
The connections between the Catholic Church in France and the Vichy Regime are a prominent theme in this novel. Moore even refers to a real person, the onetime Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, as one of Brossard’s protectors, although he doesn’t directly feature. As mentioned in the blurb, the character of Brossard is based on Paul Touvier, the first Frenchman to be convicted for crimes against humanity committed during WW2.
The book was adapted into a 2003 film which I haven’t seen, but which had poor reviews.
Set in 1989, the plot is based around the hunt for a 70-year-old war criminal, Pierre Brossard, who during WW2 served in la Milice, a paramilitary group who served the collaborationist Vichy France regime. Although wanted for crimes against humanity, since the end of WW2 Brossard has been protected by conservative elements of the Catholic Church in France, who have allowed him to hide out in various monasteries. He finds though, that he has fewer and fewer protectors as the wartime generation passes on. A Colonel Roux of the Gendarmerie is on his trail, and so is an assassin from a mysterious group who aim to extract revenge for his wartime crimes. One effect of this is that the perspective shifts constantly between the three main protagonists as well as others. I mention that as I know some people don’t like that style of novel. I don’t mind it.
I did feel that Brossard was painted at times as a bit of pantomime villain. Not content with him as an extreme racist and anti-Semite (no doubt accurate for such a character), the author also portrays him being cruel to animals. At that point I felt myself thinking “OK. He’s the bad guy. I get the message.” Despite that, anyone looking for a political thriller could do worse than this book. At 250 pages it’s not overlong, and the author keeps up a lively pace throughout.
The connections between the Catholic Church in France and the Vichy Regime are a prominent theme in this novel. Moore even refers to a real person, the onetime Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, as one of Brossard’s protectors, although he doesn’t directly feature. As mentioned in the blurb, the character of Brossard is based on Paul Touvier, the first Frenchman to be convicted for crimes against humanity committed during WW2.
The book was adapted into a 2003 film which I haven’t seen, but which had poor reviews.
March 27, 2022
Like The Magician's Wife this is another of Brian Moore's novels, that is more than just a political thriller, it is a work of historical fiction that brings together both his lifetime passion for attacking the Catholic Church (and here it is for the crime of harbouring a war criminal fugitive) and his curiosity for elements of a country's history that often go undetected by the world at large.
The Magician's Wife came about, after the random spotting of a historical fact in The Correspondence of Gustave Flaubert George Sand: Flaubert - Sand about a famous French magician who was sent on a mission to Algeria by Napoleon II in order to advance the cause of intended colonial interests, he was to perform to locals to undermine their faith in their own marabout (mystical men).
In The Statement, published in 1995, he writes a story of a French fugitive pursued by an unknown group of assassins and the gendarmerie, who is sheltered by various monasteries and clergy.
While the story itself races through the south of France, from Salon de Provence, through Aix to Nice and Villefranche, (made into a film in 2004 featuring Michael Caine and Tilda Swinton); it is the underlying history that had me 'stop and start' reading, looking up clues that he drops, like the use of the word milice a word he does not translate from the French, a word I was not familiar with, but one that leads you down a labyrinth of links related to the military history of France during World War II.
Brian Moore described his novel The Statement as "a novel with a knife in it" - and it makes me wonder, who exactly he had the knife out for. It openly take on a dirty, hidden element of French history and war crimes perpetrated by Vichy France, it pits the right wing police against the left wing gendarmes, and adds in hypocritical, anti-Semitic attitudes of the Catholic church in France.
It's an interesting and strange tale to be reading, as France prepares to elect a new President in the coming months, at a time when politics has become more divisive than ever. I'm left pondering Moore's pessimistic words, he is said to have stressed:
They might not change the world, but they can lead us to look further than their simple storytelling to find the real life tales beneath that serve as a warning.
Further Reading
Review - Roger Kaplan
The Magician's Wife came about, after the random spotting of a historical fact in The Correspondence of Gustave Flaubert George Sand: Flaubert - Sand about a famous French magician who was sent on a mission to Algeria by Napoleon II in order to advance the cause of intended colonial interests, he was to perform to locals to undermine their faith in their own marabout (mystical men).
In The Statement, published in 1995, he writes a story of a French fugitive pursued by an unknown group of assassins and the gendarmerie, who is sheltered by various monasteries and clergy.
While the story itself races through the south of France, from Salon de Provence, through Aix to Nice and Villefranche, (made into a film in 2004 featuring Michael Caine and Tilda Swinton); it is the underlying history that had me 'stop and start' reading, looking up clues that he drops, like the use of the word milice a word he does not translate from the French, a word I was not familiar with, but one that leads you down a labyrinth of links related to the military history of France during World War II.
Brian Moore described his novel The Statement as "a novel with a knife in it" - and it makes me wonder, who exactly he had the knife out for. It openly take on a dirty, hidden element of French history and war crimes perpetrated by Vichy France, it pits the right wing police against the left wing gendarmes, and adds in hypocritical, anti-Semitic attitudes of the Catholic church in France.
It's an interesting and strange tale to be reading, as France prepares to elect a new President in the coming months, at a time when politics has become more divisive than ever. I'm left pondering Moore's pessimistic words, he is said to have stressed:
"I don't think novels do change the world."
They might not change the world, but they can lead us to look further than their simple storytelling to find the real life tales beneath that serve as a warning.
Further Reading
Review - Roger Kaplan
If the true writer is an outsider, few have perfected this role as subtly as Brian Moore, whose finest work was always marked by his surest personal qualities: intelligence, curiosity and an abiding sense of justice. - extract from an article by Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
June 15, 2015
It is the thriller element that gained the four stars for this book.
If considered a literary work, I would give a star (or star and half) less.
As a crime thriller, this kept me on the chase of the pages from the first page itself. This story is about a manhunt - a fugitive who is on the run and who is chased by more than one group. There is action everywhere (shootings, killings, search warrants, political conspiracies, nail biting escapades, etc.).
This is loosely based on the real life story of a certain Paul Touvier (a French war criminal, the first one to be prosecuted for the crimes against humanity - involved in the organized killing of Jews during the World War II). This case was very popular in the media. And so, Brain Moore had taken it as a cue and had spun a fast paced thriller tale out of it.
Brian Moore might have been stimulated to write this story for it involved the Catholic Church. Catholic Church seemed to have given asylum to the war criminal for more than 40 years when he was in the hiding. B. Moore who struggled with his faith (he was a lapsed Catholic) reflected the struggles in the characters of the novels that he wrote. Here, B. Moore speaks of Sacrament of Reconciliation and the elements (contrition, penance, repentance) involved with it. He critically looks at it.
He writes: "Ego te absolvo: those words, the most joyous in religion. He remembered, long ago, when he was a boy in Sanary, coming out after confession, and feeling sense of triumph. Confession was the greatest sacrament of the Church, a passport out of the flames of hell. Sometimes he thought that he might not be so religious a Catholic, so devout in his duties, if he did not have the relief of knowing that his sins would be forgiven."
The entire novel is filled with criticisms of the Catholic Church. He writes about the Pope of then (the thought of the fanatic in the novel): "This Pope's a Polack, going around the world like a salesman, celebrating mass with bare-arsed savages and making cardinals out of niggers."
Whatever it is, it is very clear that B. Moore could not get himself rid of Catholicism. It is that struggle that interests me in his novels. I will read his other books as well.
If considered a literary work, I would give a star (or star and half) less.
As a crime thriller, this kept me on the chase of the pages from the first page itself. This story is about a manhunt - a fugitive who is on the run and who is chased by more than one group. There is action everywhere (shootings, killings, search warrants, political conspiracies, nail biting escapades, etc.).
This is loosely based on the real life story of a certain Paul Touvier (a French war criminal, the first one to be prosecuted for the crimes against humanity - involved in the organized killing of Jews during the World War II). This case was very popular in the media. And so, Brain Moore had taken it as a cue and had spun a fast paced thriller tale out of it.
Brian Moore might have been stimulated to write this story for it involved the Catholic Church. Catholic Church seemed to have given asylum to the war criminal for more than 40 years when he was in the hiding. B. Moore who struggled with his faith (he was a lapsed Catholic) reflected the struggles in the characters of the novels that he wrote. Here, B. Moore speaks of Sacrament of Reconciliation and the elements (contrition, penance, repentance) involved with it. He critically looks at it.
He writes: "Ego te absolvo: those words, the most joyous in religion. He remembered, long ago, when he was a boy in Sanary, coming out after confession, and feeling sense of triumph. Confession was the greatest sacrament of the Church, a passport out of the flames of hell. Sometimes he thought that he might not be so religious a Catholic, so devout in his duties, if he did not have the relief of knowing that his sins would be forgiven."
The entire novel is filled with criticisms of the Catholic Church. He writes about the Pope of then (the thought of the fanatic in the novel): "This Pope's a Polack, going around the world like a salesman, celebrating mass with bare-arsed savages and making cardinals out of niggers."
Whatever it is, it is very clear that B. Moore could not get himself rid of Catholicism. It is that struggle that interests me in his novels. I will read his other books as well.
July 20, 2017
I am always surprised by Brian Moore's books. I go along for a few pages thinking I don't like them and I'm wasting my time. Then POW! everything changes. I'm engrossed and overwhelmed by developments that were lurking below the surface and suddenly came forward with the nonchalance that they were there all along. The Great Victorian Collection and Catholics were my first reads by him and were certainly that way. The Statement is a little more of a mainstream disillusioned spy story, but still meets up to the illusionist's usual subterfuge. I haven't read Moore in years, but now I am wondering why.
June 10, 2020
A very well plotted, engaging crime thriller novel about the manhunt of Frenchman, Pierre Broussard. It’s the early 1990s, Broussard is in his 70s, and he is travelling around Southern France. In 1946 Broussard was involved in the murder of fourteen Jews. Broussard was a former officer in the pro-Fascist militia which served Vichy France. Broussard has spent his life hiding, travelling among the monasteries and abbeys that offer him asylum. Now a new breed of government officials are determined to break decades of silence and expose and expiate the crimes of Vichy.
An eventful, gripping, drama packed, interesting and entertaining short novel.
An eventful, gripping, drama packed, interesting and entertaining short novel.
September 14, 2019
He's so good, sometimes even Graham Greene good.
November 27, 2023
A chase novel. In each chapter the narrator takes a close third person point of view from one of several different characters including a fugitive who committed war crimes in France over 40 years earlier, his protectors within the Catholic Church, his hunters including both assassins and police pursuers as they close in on him. There is some backtracking of the ‘meanwhile back at the ranch’ type, but generally the action unfolds in linear time with occasional flashbacks.
Though the author is bitingly critical of France’s post war treatment of war criminals by civil and religious authorities, not unlike Graham Greene he seems obsessed by Catholic doctrinal issues. This detracts from the story’s suspense and in the end there are no surprises.
Though the author is bitingly critical of France’s post war treatment of war criminals by civil and religious authorities, not unlike Graham Greene he seems obsessed by Catholic doctrinal issues. This detracts from the story’s suspense and in the end there are no surprises.
May 21, 2022
I'm a Brian Moore fan and I'm a Graham Greene fan but I think this fell between the cracks of the two. Too many names!
September 18, 2010
The main character in The Statement is Pierre Brossard, an aged frenchman on the run from his past as a nazi-accomplice during occupied WW2 france.
For 40 years, he has been aided and sheltered by the Catholic Church in France and supported by some former friends, but the noose is tightening and his life is being threatened by Jewish assassins and he is being hunted by the authorities.
It is a quick read and gives a fast-paced story that gives some insight into recent French history and hints at some murky dealings of the Church at the time but I don't know how much of it is based on fact, but that does not matter as this is not a history book.
The author is very careful to make sure that you feel a mixture of revulsion for Brossard's history and his obvious lack of contrition and also some compassion for an old man on the run from people trying to kill him.
The fact that you find yourself wishing that this obvious villain manages to evade his pursuers and avoid being held to account for his past actions is important and meant that for me the book was a step above your average supermarket paperback.
For 40 years, he has been aided and sheltered by the Catholic Church in France and supported by some former friends, but the noose is tightening and his life is being threatened by Jewish assassins and he is being hunted by the authorities.
It is a quick read and gives a fast-paced story that gives some insight into recent French history and hints at some murky dealings of the Church at the time but I don't know how much of it is based on fact, but that does not matter as this is not a history book.
The author is very careful to make sure that you feel a mixture of revulsion for Brossard's history and his obvious lack of contrition and also some compassion for an old man on the run from people trying to kill him.
The fact that you find yourself wishing that this obvious villain manages to evade his pursuers and avoid being held to account for his past actions is important and meant that for me the book was a step above your average supermarket paperback.
June 20, 2010
An interesting read, yet not as gripping as Lies of Silence, perhaps because of Moore's distance from the place and the type of subject, who is another man of principle, sort of. The verdict is out on that, in fact, even at the end of the book despite our seeing more of his thoughts than of any other character. We needed more of the juge d'instruction to match her place in the book and to balance the other lay legal group (all males), while the clerics worked quite well as a mixed group: we saw enough of them to understand their place and motives. The only counterbalance to brossard was the colonel, whom we needed to see a bit more of, too. But I read through it easily and not without pleasure.
May 1, 2022
The Statement by Brian Moore delivered as promised. I am a follower and fan of Scott Bradfield’s YouTube review series great books in the bathtub. In a recent discussion of the southern novels of Harry Crews the topic of religion arose. I commented having escaped Catholicism with only minor brain damage. Scott recommended Brian Moore’s The Statement to me. Et voila…
The story is the pursuit of Pierre Broussard, a Nazi collaborator of Vichy France, wanted since being allowed to escape by the French police in 1944, and protected by right wing elements, church clerics and hidden political figures. Granted a pardon for his crimes in 1971 by the French President, however new crimes have emerged and he is wanted for crimes against humanity, specifically the execution of 14 Jews. It is now 1989, Broussard is 70, and the net is closing under the leadership of a new prosecutor who places Colonel Roux of the Gendarmes in charge of his capture. There are also contracted assasins now also in search of Broussard.
The story is well told as a political thriller and worthy on those merits. But as Scott quickly deduced with me, Brian Moore has other fish to fry that being the church and the perversion of it’s sacrament of forgiveness. And that will be the focus of my review.
Our antihero Broussard and his merciful god: “He went straight into the nearest church and, on his knees, thanked God for his deliverance. God had helped him once again. God who loved him, who understood him, who protected him from his enemies.” The hunted man, “ And it will never end. Never, until he dies. God has pardoned him his sins. Of that I am sure. But his enemies will not.”
“ He thought now of absolution. Ego te absolvo. Those words, the most joyous in religion. He remembered, long ago, when he was a boy in Sanary, coming out after confession and feeling a sense of triumph. Confession was the greatest sacrament of the Church, a passport out of the flames of hell. Sometimes he thought that he might not be so religious a Catholic, so devout in his duties, if he did not have the relief of knowing that his sins would be forgiven. That was why he had come to Caunes. It was worth the risk, colonel or no colonel. Ego te absolvo.”
[ go now you are forgiven, sin no more… but do so, just ask and you will be forgiven…god is merciful ]
Then the twisted logic of church and state layer out in black and white. “ Father Abbot?” “Yes. Let me explain. In 1940, under Maréchal Pétain, France was given a chance to revoke the errors, the weakness and selfishness of the Third Republic, that regime that caused us to lose the war to the Germans. Of course, it was a sad time. I’m not denying it. Part of the country was occupied, but you must remember there was a large free zone, the zone of the Vichy government, the Maréchal’s government, which was giving us the hope of a new cooperation between our country and Germany. Under the Maréchal, we were led away from selfish materialism and those democratic parliaments which preached a false equality, back to the Catholic values we were brought up in: the family, the nation, the Church. But when the Germans lost the war, all that was finished. Stalin’s communist armies overran Europe. The enemies of religion came back in force. I believe that poor Pierre Brossard wasn’t very different from me, or from many others. He was brought up to believe the things we believed in, he fought for those things, he was loyal, as most Frenchmen were, not to de Gaulle, far away in London with the English, who deserted us in 1940, but to the Maréchal, who did not run away but stayed to unite us. Unfortunately, Brossard eventually chose to join the Milice, which, I agree, became brutal in the end. But I also believe in forgiveness, Father. I believe in contrition. I believe that Pierre Brossard was led into error but has since repented for his sins and, like hundreds of others who lived through those times, is being victimized for fighting and believing in values which were anathema to the communists who controlled the Résistance. And so I think it’s a disgrace that now, in his hour of greatest need, the main body of the Church shows him no mercy and sends these priests around with orders that we are to shut him out.”
The highest power and those vested in the interpretation of these powers: “The Church is not bound by man’s laws, but by the law of God,” the Abbot said. “Judgments handed down by the State don’t necessarily absolve us, as Christians, from helping unfortunates who seek our help.”
But a final reckoning will be at hand: “In death, he saw the dead men, lined up in a row, their feet touching the cemetery wall. There were fourteen of them, one short of the number he had promised the Gestapo. Their Jewish name tags, tied around their necks, fluttered gently in the night breeze. He would have to step over them to reach the other end of the alleyway. But, on his orders, the execution squad had placed them close together, with not enough room to pass between them. He fell forward, striking his head on the concrete walk. Pain consumed him but through it he struggled to say, at last, that prayer the Church had taught him, that true act of contrition for his crimes. But he could feel no contrition. He had never felt contrite for the acts of his life. And now, when he asked God’s pardon, God chose to show him fourteen dead Jews.”
And the church and us sinners march onward, to greater glory of god.
A mixed blessing to all?
Thanks Scott, and Dennis, for the book recommendation.
The story is the pursuit of Pierre Broussard, a Nazi collaborator of Vichy France, wanted since being allowed to escape by the French police in 1944, and protected by right wing elements, church clerics and hidden political figures. Granted a pardon for his crimes in 1971 by the French President, however new crimes have emerged and he is wanted for crimes against humanity, specifically the execution of 14 Jews. It is now 1989, Broussard is 70, and the net is closing under the leadership of a new prosecutor who places Colonel Roux of the Gendarmes in charge of his capture. There are also contracted assasins now also in search of Broussard.
The story is well told as a political thriller and worthy on those merits. But as Scott quickly deduced with me, Brian Moore has other fish to fry that being the church and the perversion of it’s sacrament of forgiveness. And that will be the focus of my review.
Our antihero Broussard and his merciful god: “He went straight into the nearest church and, on his knees, thanked God for his deliverance. God had helped him once again. God who loved him, who understood him, who protected him from his enemies.” The hunted man, “ And it will never end. Never, until he dies. God has pardoned him his sins. Of that I am sure. But his enemies will not.”
“ He thought now of absolution. Ego te absolvo. Those words, the most joyous in religion. He remembered, long ago, when he was a boy in Sanary, coming out after confession and feeling a sense of triumph. Confession was the greatest sacrament of the Church, a passport out of the flames of hell. Sometimes he thought that he might not be so religious a Catholic, so devout in his duties, if he did not have the relief of knowing that his sins would be forgiven. That was why he had come to Caunes. It was worth the risk, colonel or no colonel. Ego te absolvo.”
[ go now you are forgiven, sin no more… but do so, just ask and you will be forgiven…god is merciful ]
Then the twisted logic of church and state layer out in black and white. “ Father Abbot?” “Yes. Let me explain. In 1940, under Maréchal Pétain, France was given a chance to revoke the errors, the weakness and selfishness of the Third Republic, that regime that caused us to lose the war to the Germans. Of course, it was a sad time. I’m not denying it. Part of the country was occupied, but you must remember there was a large free zone, the zone of the Vichy government, the Maréchal’s government, which was giving us the hope of a new cooperation between our country and Germany. Under the Maréchal, we were led away from selfish materialism and those democratic parliaments which preached a false equality, back to the Catholic values we were brought up in: the family, the nation, the Church. But when the Germans lost the war, all that was finished. Stalin’s communist armies overran Europe. The enemies of religion came back in force. I believe that poor Pierre Brossard wasn’t very different from me, or from many others. He was brought up to believe the things we believed in, he fought for those things, he was loyal, as most Frenchmen were, not to de Gaulle, far away in London with the English, who deserted us in 1940, but to the Maréchal, who did not run away but stayed to unite us. Unfortunately, Brossard eventually chose to join the Milice, which, I agree, became brutal in the end. But I also believe in forgiveness, Father. I believe in contrition. I believe that Pierre Brossard was led into error but has since repented for his sins and, like hundreds of others who lived through those times, is being victimized for fighting and believing in values which were anathema to the communists who controlled the Résistance. And so I think it’s a disgrace that now, in his hour of greatest need, the main body of the Church shows him no mercy and sends these priests around with orders that we are to shut him out.”
The highest power and those vested in the interpretation of these powers: “The Church is not bound by man’s laws, but by the law of God,” the Abbot said. “Judgments handed down by the State don’t necessarily absolve us, as Christians, from helping unfortunates who seek our help.”
But a final reckoning will be at hand: “In death, he saw the dead men, lined up in a row, their feet touching the cemetery wall. There were fourteen of them, one short of the number he had promised the Gestapo. Their Jewish name tags, tied around their necks, fluttered gently in the night breeze. He would have to step over them to reach the other end of the alleyway. But, on his orders, the execution squad had placed them close together, with not enough room to pass between them. He fell forward, striking his head on the concrete walk. Pain consumed him but through it he struggled to say, at last, that prayer the Church had taught him, that true act of contrition for his crimes. But he could feel no contrition. He had never felt contrite for the acts of his life. And now, when he asked God’s pardon, God chose to show him fourteen dead Jews.”
And the church and us sinners march onward, to greater glory of god.
A mixed blessing to all?
Thanks Scott, and Dennis, for the book recommendation.
August 3, 2025
Lean and mean fact-based political thriller about the hunt for a French war criminal and Nazi collaborator, now an old man, sheltered for decades by a network of Catholic monasteries. The basis for Norman Jewison’s final film, an uninspired adaptation starring Michael Caine as the aging fugitive and murderous antisemite. Most interesting aspect of the film, as well as the more tightly constructed novel, is the damning complicity of the Catholic Church.
August 23, 2016
The Statement by Brian Moore is an interesting look at the problem of hidden war criminals in France after World War II. Moore simultaneously shows the groups tracking the anti-hero, Pierre Brossard, and by omniscient point of view gives the reader an inside look at every character's thought and plans. Intriguing.
February 24, 2021
Somewhat interesting tale about the hunt for an ex-Nazi French camp supervisor, only too many loose ends were left unanswered for me at the end. The consequence was (for me) the novel wends its way through a lot of intrigues in the pursuit of the main character, but then ends abruptly without giving the details as to why it ended the way it did.
July 1, 2009
A powerful indictment of the Church during and after WWII. One of Brian Moore's best. I was fortunate to hear him read the first chapter at the 92nd St Y in NYC many years ago.
July 4, 2018
I had the opportunity to hear this author speak -He... is a great speaker.
Book was ok- could be I have just over-read this horrific subject .
Book was ok- could be I have just over-read this horrific subject .
October 3, 2024
Brian Moore's "The Statement" is an excellent thriller based essentially on the life of Paul Touvier a member of the "Milice" of the Vichy Regime of occupied France. In the position of "second regional head" in the Chambery region, Touvier confiscated property from Jewish families and in 1944 ordered the execution of seven Jewish prisoners for their supposed involvement in the assassination of Philippe Henriot the Vichy France Minister for Propaganda. For his crimes Touvier was sentenced to death in 1946 in absentia. However with the help of several religions orders, Touvier was able to remain in hiding until 1966 when by the statue of limitations his death sentence expired. He received a presidential pardon from George Pompidou in 1971. However, in 1973 a Jewish group brought charges against Touvier under the aegis of "Crimes against humanity" which was not covered by the pardon. Touvier went into hiding again but in 1989 was apprehended in a priory in Nice. Seven years later he died of cancer in Prison.
Moore alters the story. His protagonist is named Pierre Brossard. The number of executed Jewish prisoners rises from 7 to 14. In addition to the police Brossard/Touvier is hunted by killers in the hire of unnamed Jewish groups. As a thriller, "The Statement" is excellent. The pacing is superb. The various shout-outs are exciting and Brossard is a fascinating protagonist.
The major purpose of the book is to assess the extent of the guilt of the Catholic Church in the affair. Brossard/Touvier avoids capture for roughly 30 years because a number of monasteries choose to hide him. Moore also argues that Touvier was a product of an anti-Semitic French culture and education system. Finally Moore suggests that the Vatican under Pius XII was sympathetic to those in the church who helped the Nazis and their collaborator escape justice. The problem for Brossard/Touvier in the view of Moore was that the generation of Church leaders after Pius XII were sympathetic to the Nazi hunters.
Ultimately Moore is two-faced. On one page he describes the Nazi sympathizers as being part of a minority in the church. The next page he implies that that the pro-Nazi group was in a position of dominance.
Moore also chooses to ignore the fact that the desire to end the hunt for and punish of Nazi collaborators in France was broadly spread throughout French society. The so-called purges ("épuration") had in fact been quite brutal. Up to 20,000 individuals may have been executed in the judicial and extra-judicial proceedings. Between 40,000 and 100,000 may have received other sanctions. (The extra-judicial communist reprisals are discussed in Marcel Aymé's "Uranus". While the shavings of the heads of woman who slept with Germans is addressed in "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" by Marguerite Duras.) Moore, however, implies that the desire to end the reprisals was due entirely to pro-fascist and antisemitic feelings amongst French Catholics.
While I cannot say that Moore ever lies, I find he presents a distorted view of French history. I think that "The Statement" is slowly being forgotten which is a fate that it deserves.
Moore alters the story. His protagonist is named Pierre Brossard. The number of executed Jewish prisoners rises from 7 to 14. In addition to the police Brossard/Touvier is hunted by killers in the hire of unnamed Jewish groups. As a thriller, "The Statement" is excellent. The pacing is superb. The various shout-outs are exciting and Brossard is a fascinating protagonist.
The major purpose of the book is to assess the extent of the guilt of the Catholic Church in the affair. Brossard/Touvier avoids capture for roughly 30 years because a number of monasteries choose to hide him. Moore also argues that Touvier was a product of an anti-Semitic French culture and education system. Finally Moore suggests that the Vatican under Pius XII was sympathetic to those in the church who helped the Nazis and their collaborator escape justice. The problem for Brossard/Touvier in the view of Moore was that the generation of Church leaders after Pius XII were sympathetic to the Nazi hunters.
Ultimately Moore is two-faced. On one page he describes the Nazi sympathizers as being part of a minority in the church. The next page he implies that that the pro-Nazi group was in a position of dominance.
Moore also chooses to ignore the fact that the desire to end the hunt for and punish of Nazi collaborators in France was broadly spread throughout French society. The so-called purges ("épuration") had in fact been quite brutal. Up to 20,000 individuals may have been executed in the judicial and extra-judicial proceedings. Between 40,000 and 100,000 may have received other sanctions. (The extra-judicial communist reprisals are discussed in Marcel Aymé's "Uranus". While the shavings of the heads of woman who slept with Germans is addressed in "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" by Marguerite Duras.) Moore, however, implies that the desire to end the reprisals was due entirely to pro-fascist and antisemitic feelings amongst French Catholics.
While I cannot say that Moore ever lies, I find he presents a distorted view of French history. I think that "The Statement" is slowly being forgotten which is a fate that it deserves.
May 2, 2021
3.5 Stars*
This book was pretty good and pretty short, but it could've been a lot better to me. It's about a nazi in France, around 40 years after the Second World War. Spoiler alert, the nazis lost. So after all this time, people are finally seeking this man to give him justice. Multiple groups are looking for him, a mercenary group as well as police.
The dialogue here is written greatly, I highly enjoyed it. What I didn't like so much is the fact that there were way too many characters for a short story like this. The book confused me multiple times as to who I was actually following at certain points. There were also way too many locations and descriptions about churches and priests and different titles and so forth. If the book focused more on the dialogue and kept it more compact instead of throwing in more and more useless side characters, this could've been an easy 5 stars instead of a 3.5 (or a 4 because Goodreads still doesn't know the meaning of half points, because that's acceptable in 2021).
All in all, a really great story weighed down by heavy descriptions and a lot of subjectively useless side characters. If you want to give this book a try, go for it. It's not even 250 pages so you're not losing much time, i still enjoyed it a lot after everything is said and done.
This book was pretty good and pretty short, but it could've been a lot better to me. It's about a nazi in France, around 40 years after the Second World War. Spoiler alert, the nazis lost. So after all this time, people are finally seeking this man to give him justice. Multiple groups are looking for him, a mercenary group as well as police.
The dialogue here is written greatly, I highly enjoyed it. What I didn't like so much is the fact that there were way too many characters for a short story like this. The book confused me multiple times as to who I was actually following at certain points. There were also way too many locations and descriptions about churches and priests and different titles and so forth. If the book focused more on the dialogue and kept it more compact instead of throwing in more and more useless side characters, this could've been an easy 5 stars instead of a 3.5 (or a 4 because Goodreads still doesn't know the meaning of half points, because that's acceptable in 2021).
All in all, a really great story weighed down by heavy descriptions and a lot of subjectively useless side characters. If you want to give this book a try, go for it. It's not even 250 pages so you're not losing much time, i still enjoyed it a lot after everything is said and done.
March 11, 2022
My Interest
Cathy at 746 Books introduced me to author Brian Moore when she hosted a read-along for the author’s 100th birthday year. I did not get anything read for that, but kept him in mind. This month is Read Ireland Month, (also hosted by Cathy) so I made sure to start with a Brian Moore book. This is the one I could get on e-audio from the library.
His name is Brian–Bree-an? I did not know that. I was thinking Brian.
The Story
“…he could feel no contrition. He had never felt contrition for the acts of his life.”
In Nazi-occupied Vichy France, Pierre Brossard, was responsible for the execution of 14 Jews and for other crimes against humanity in the War. Since then he has come to hate other groups, too–the “Noir” especially. Now past retirement age, Brossard rejected a Vatican passport and the chance to hide away in South America years ago. To stay alive he has been constantly on the run staying at religious retreat houses, monasteries, and other places of “sanctuary” and supported by a conservative Catholic group. A new surge of interest in bringing fugitive Nazi’s and Nazi-sympathizers to justice means he is in trouble. The newer factions in the church are turning against him and those doors of sanctuary are closing for him. What will he do?
My Thoughts
I thought this a very good political thriller. Good suspense, realistic atmosphere and believable events were what impressed me the most. The inner dialogue, the conversations, the nightmares, though, were what made it so good. When we hear the fugitive admit he has never felt ANY contrition! Wow. No words. Yet no one can truly believe, looking at today’s world, that he was alone in that feeling. Powerful book.
Cathy at 746 Books introduced me to author Brian Moore when she hosted a read-along for the author’s 100th birthday year. I did not get anything read for that, but kept him in mind. This month is Read Ireland Month, (also hosted by Cathy) so I made sure to start with a Brian Moore book. This is the one I could get on e-audio from the library.
His name is Brian–Bree-an? I did not know that. I was thinking Brian.
The Story
“…he could feel no contrition. He had never felt contrition for the acts of his life.”
In Nazi-occupied Vichy France, Pierre Brossard, was responsible for the execution of 14 Jews and for other crimes against humanity in the War. Since then he has come to hate other groups, too–the “Noir” especially. Now past retirement age, Brossard rejected a Vatican passport and the chance to hide away in South America years ago. To stay alive he has been constantly on the run staying at religious retreat houses, monasteries, and other places of “sanctuary” and supported by a conservative Catholic group. A new surge of interest in bringing fugitive Nazi’s and Nazi-sympathizers to justice means he is in trouble. The newer factions in the church are turning against him and those doors of sanctuary are closing for him. What will he do?
My Thoughts
I thought this a very good political thriller. Good suspense, realistic atmosphere and believable events were what impressed me the most. The inner dialogue, the conversations, the nightmares, though, were what made it so good. When we hear the fugitive admit he has never felt ANY contrition! Wow. No words. Yet no one can truly believe, looking at today’s world, that he was alone in that feeling. Powerful book.
April 2, 2021
Another excellent book by Brian Moore. This one is an exciting thriller about a WW II war criminal on the run for 40 years. A Frenchman responsible for the deaths of 14 Jews, he is wanted for crimes against humanity and must move from one hiding place to another to avoid capture. Occasionally, he even relies on the help of the Catholic Church to conceal him.
Though you know how a book like this will end, it still keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Though you know how a book like this will end, it still keeps you on the edge of your seat.
June 3, 2023
Expertly constructed but this is not my genre. It is set in the south of France (why I picked it up) but little attention was paid to landscape, or character for the matter. The plot was engaging but everyone involved was unlikeable, and the main character's antisemitism and anti-Black racism made me uncomfortable, even though we are meant to detest him.
May 22, 2019
I was surprised at how little I knew about the happenings in France during WWII. Reading this book pointed out my woeful ignorance which I have since rectified.
I enjoyed the book despite the fact that the main character is totally unlikeable. My thoughts at the end were of the many who either was also involved in atrocities and got away with it because they knew the right people, or those who aided and abetted them because they had similar beliefs. They will one day have to meet higher justice than found on earth.
I enjoyed the book despite the fact that the main character is totally unlikeable. My thoughts at the end were of the many who either was also involved in atrocities and got away with it because they knew the right people, or those who aided and abetted them because they had similar beliefs. They will one day have to meet higher justice than found on earth.
September 29, 2022
Dramatic start, slow burn, abrupt ending.
October 1, 2023
"An innocuous white Peugeot makes its way around the monasteries and abbeys of Southern France. No one would suspect its driver of being the target of commando hit-men, the gendarmerie's most wanted criminal or a public enemy sentenced twice to death in abstentia for wartime crimes. For over forty years this fugitive has been sheltered in his own land by both Church and State. But now that he is becoming a cause celebre, and the net is closing in, what other collaborators lurk in high places, dreading exposure." From the jacket of the 1995 hardback edition of the novel from Bloomsbury.
Fantastic novel, I admire Brian Moore immensely as a very fine writer. This novel has been described, accurately, as a thriller and it is a very good one - but it is so much more. This is a novel of moral and morality, personal, political and institutional and is a brilliant examination of guilt and punishment. The setting is France and the on-going repercussions of what people did or did not do in WWII, and also about the compromises that were made to create the legends that allowed France and the French people to recover from defeat in 1940. It is about the role of the French catholic church and the church in Rome in sheltering and supporting those with a tainted past, but also the French state which was far more willing then it is even now willing to admit in covering up the dishonourable actions of some very nasty men.
All of that is in this novel and also the question of religious belief, the struggle for sincerity and how easily it is to fool ourselves as well others. I loved this novel. It with all these elements, political, personal, religious, etc. with a depth, honesty and insight within a novel whose brevity is only apparent when it's end surprises you.
I was torn with indecision about rating this four or five stars. For me it was a five star novel but I wondered would its subject, which was familiar to me as part of events I had grown up with and with moral questions which resonated, would feel as real or powerful to younger readers? I don't know so I giving it four stars but I hope more and more readers keep discovering Moore's novels.
The following note was added in February 2023:
A final comment - I have shelved this as Irish literary fiction because the author is Irish. If I was to take the subject of a book into account I would need an additional shelving category.
Fantastic novel, I admire Brian Moore immensely as a very fine writer. This novel has been described, accurately, as a thriller and it is a very good one - but it is so much more. This is a novel of moral and morality, personal, political and institutional and is a brilliant examination of guilt and punishment. The setting is France and the on-going repercussions of what people did or did not do in WWII, and also about the compromises that were made to create the legends that allowed France and the French people to recover from defeat in 1940. It is about the role of the French catholic church and the church in Rome in sheltering and supporting those with a tainted past, but also the French state which was far more willing then it is even now willing to admit in covering up the dishonourable actions of some very nasty men.
All of that is in this novel and also the question of religious belief, the struggle for sincerity and how easily it is to fool ourselves as well others. I loved this novel. It with all these elements, political, personal, religious, etc. with a depth, honesty and insight within a novel whose brevity is only apparent when it's end surprises you.
I was torn with indecision about rating this four or five stars. For me it was a five star novel but I wondered would its subject, which was familiar to me as part of events I had grown up with and with moral questions which resonated, would feel as real or powerful to younger readers? I don't know so I giving it four stars but I hope more and more readers keep discovering Moore's novels.
The following note was added in February 2023:
A final comment - I have shelved this as Irish literary fiction because the author is Irish. If I was to take the subject of a book into account I would need an additional shelving category.
February 11, 2008
While they were both still walking the earth, Graham Greene said of Brian Moore, "He is my favorite living novelist." And while Greene's place among the canon for twentieth-century British literature is as solid as they come, I fear that (the late?) Brian Moore may toddle off into obscurity as we wander through the next century. As a writer of what I can only call "literary mysteries," Moore and his mentor, Greene, stand with a handful of others, almost all British-- Geoffrey Household and Stephen Gregory are, in fact, the only two I can think of off the top of my head, and they, too, are destined for obscurity.
In this, his eighteenth (and last?) novel, Moore gives us Pierre Brossard, a Vichy sergeant who was pardoned of his war crimes in 1971, but has since been re-charged with the international Crime Against Humanity for the murder of fourteen Jews at Dombey during WW2. Brossard has been hiding with the Roman Catholic church for forty-four years, moving from abbey to abbey, concealed both by the Vichy-sympathizing elements in Mother Church and higher-ups in the French government. But with these new charges come new dispensations from a new Juge D'instruction and a far more liberal Pope, and he finds the doors of many of his old hideaways closed to him again, just as a new terrorist group is sending assassins after him for the murder of the Dombey Jews.
The synopsis of the book on its jacket doesn't really give much in the way of hope for this being all too gripping a novel; to continue the comparisons to Greene, this is more an End of the Affair than it is a Third Man. But that doesn't mean it's still not a cracking good detective story. Interestingly, all the major players are given to you within the first few chapters; it's up to you to figure out who they are and how they tie in (it is eerily reminiscent of Heinrich Boll's novels in this regard). Beneath the detective story lies the story of France itself, still struggling to find a national identity more than forty years after the end of World War II.
Despite all the heavy-sounding material, it really is a rather quick read, and it moves along fast enough that you can keep the pages turning with minimal effort.
In this, his eighteenth (and last?) novel, Moore gives us Pierre Brossard, a Vichy sergeant who was pardoned of his war crimes in 1971, but has since been re-charged with the international Crime Against Humanity for the murder of fourteen Jews at Dombey during WW2. Brossard has been hiding with the Roman Catholic church for forty-four years, moving from abbey to abbey, concealed both by the Vichy-sympathizing elements in Mother Church and higher-ups in the French government. But with these new charges come new dispensations from a new Juge D'instruction and a far more liberal Pope, and he finds the doors of many of his old hideaways closed to him again, just as a new terrorist group is sending assassins after him for the murder of the Dombey Jews.
The synopsis of the book on its jacket doesn't really give much in the way of hope for this being all too gripping a novel; to continue the comparisons to Greene, this is more an End of the Affair than it is a Third Man. But that doesn't mean it's still not a cracking good detective story. Interestingly, all the major players are given to you within the first few chapters; it's up to you to figure out who they are and how they tie in (it is eerily reminiscent of Heinrich Boll's novels in this regard). Beneath the detective story lies the story of France itself, still struggling to find a national identity more than forty years after the end of World War II.
Despite all the heavy-sounding material, it really is a rather quick read, and it moves along fast enough that you can keep the pages turning with minimal effort.
April 27, 2015
Given how well regarded the author's Belfast novels are in NI literary circles, and how much I enjoyed them, I decided a while ago to read all of his books-I've now read ten of his published works, and can't really say that this one was anywhere near as enjoyable as some of the others.
Essentially a thriller, the narrative takes place in France in the late 1980s, and follows Pierre Brossard, a former mid ranking official in the Vichy regime, as the net closes in on him after many years on the run from the authorities. For years he has been sheltered by a number of religious orders, though their charitability is waning. But who will catch him-the police or other shadier elements, intent on his assassination? And why, after all these years, do some of his pursuers want him dead so badly?
This is another pretty sparse Moore novel length wise, with a lot going on thematically, and while the book is well crafted, I didn't like any of the characters-Brossard is unsurprisingly particularly horrible, and the figures he deals with, in the abbeys and via telephone conversations were similarly disagreeable. A brief encounter with Brossards estranged wife engenders a small amount of sympathy for her, but other than that, I felt nothing for the characters.
As for the themes in the book, I've no doubt that the narrative was well researched, and that the attitude toward the French Jewish population in the years after the war was ambivalent in some areas of the population, but I felt that, as he did in a number of his other novels, Moore gave the institutions of the church a bit of a hammering, and while I'm not in any way religious, possibly because I've been reading a few books simultaneously that did the same thing, I felt that I'd preferred if this thread wasn't so strong. Of course, that's my fault for picking the book off my shelves...
In the book's defence, the action in the narrative is pretty fast paced, and while I didn't love the story, I was engaged with it, interested to see how things eventually ended-which they did, pretty abruptly.
All in all, not the most satisfying of my Moore reads-I suppose that's something I will increasingly find, having chosen the previous books based on the blurbs that most appealed to me.
Essentially a thriller, the narrative takes place in France in the late 1980s, and follows Pierre Brossard, a former mid ranking official in the Vichy regime, as the net closes in on him after many years on the run from the authorities. For years he has been sheltered by a number of religious orders, though their charitability is waning. But who will catch him-the police or other shadier elements, intent on his assassination? And why, after all these years, do some of his pursuers want him dead so badly?
This is another pretty sparse Moore novel length wise, with a lot going on thematically, and while the book is well crafted, I didn't like any of the characters-Brossard is unsurprisingly particularly horrible, and the figures he deals with, in the abbeys and via telephone conversations were similarly disagreeable. A brief encounter with Brossards estranged wife engenders a small amount of sympathy for her, but other than that, I felt nothing for the characters.
As for the themes in the book, I've no doubt that the narrative was well researched, and that the attitude toward the French Jewish population in the years after the war was ambivalent in some areas of the population, but I felt that, as he did in a number of his other novels, Moore gave the institutions of the church a bit of a hammering, and while I'm not in any way religious, possibly because I've been reading a few books simultaneously that did the same thing, I felt that I'd preferred if this thread wasn't so strong. Of course, that's my fault for picking the book off my shelves...
In the book's defence, the action in the narrative is pretty fast paced, and while I didn't love the story, I was engaged with it, interested to see how things eventually ended-which they did, pretty abruptly.
All in all, not the most satisfying of my Moore reads-I suppose that's something I will increasingly find, having chosen the previous books based on the blurbs that most appealed to me.
April 2, 2009
Reluctant to say anything too negative about this book because it is, in the end, expertly done, and I remember enjoying Lies of Silence very much. A small issue with the occasional shifts from 3rd person to 1st person – did not strike me as especially effective or necessary. Overall, however, it does what it's supposed to do and what it intends to do. Interesting contrast to Harry Crews and, more so, Jim Thompson, who shows how much can be done with so little. Pop. 1280 takes place in the backwater American south and nothing much happens until it happens but it is fascinating how the little that happens, unfolds. The Statement, on the other hand, starts with an assassination attempt in the South of France and works its way around France as a Vichy collaborationist flees a mysterious Jewish organization that pins 'statements' on the chests of the men it assassinates for (WWII) revenge. It's a good book. But unlike, by contrast, Pop. 1280, at the end of the book I found myself finishing with haste – moving quickly to the end, appreciating the momentum of the shorter chapters, but also thinking about the book I'll read next. This is not a bad thing, but the books I enjoy most tend to end in one of two ways: either (1) I slow down intentionally, to savor every last word; or (2) the book seems to disappear in my hands (one moment it's there, the next gone) because I have become consumed by its story. Neither is the case in The Statement.
May 7, 2017
It was a taut little read, nice short chapters, densely paced. At first I was ambivalent to the main protagonist... I certainly didn't like him, nor did I sympathize with him, but I kept in mind that during a war people pick sides, and there's a 50 - 50 chance that you end up on the wrong one. And even the good guys can do terrible things. What can start off as right can quickly cross the line into wrong, and such a wide grey area between... Sure, I remembered all that while reading. I thought of how maybe in his mind he really could rationalize that he had been doing the right thing, or at least working for the right cause... But all it takes is one kick to a blind, old dog by the main protagonist to get me to really hate him. There just isn't any way to rationalize that, is there? Really turned my stomach, it did. Anyway, the "old turd" as they called him, was wanted by two sides, and I can't say which one I would've preferred get him, and I won't say which one did, but I will say the bastard got what he deserved.
March 23, 2014
I hadn't read any Brian Moore before. He was in the pantheon of Canadian writers and that both put me (also Canadian)off and made me want to check him out. I came across this book as an entry point.
It is a thriller. Set in France in the 1980s an old collaborator and war criminal remains on the run, pursued by the police, the military, a revenge-seeking Jewish commando and other shadowy forces. He is protected by conservative priests and monks of the French catholic church as well as by figures from the past, still a force in contemporary France. The new church is undermining this support system.
It is a short, taut read, reminding me of Graham Greene. No one in the story is particularly likeable, least of all, perhaps, the protagonist. The book ends with much unresolved, perhaps a commeentary on the status of history and the many loose ends that remain after a catacysm like WW2.
I will be following up with other works by Moore.
It is a thriller. Set in France in the 1980s an old collaborator and war criminal remains on the run, pursued by the police, the military, a revenge-seeking Jewish commando and other shadowy forces. He is protected by conservative priests and monks of the French catholic church as well as by figures from the past, still a force in contemporary France. The new church is undermining this support system.
It is a short, taut read, reminding me of Graham Greene. No one in the story is particularly likeable, least of all, perhaps, the protagonist. The book ends with much unresolved, perhaps a commeentary on the status of history and the many loose ends that remain after a catacysm like WW2.
I will be following up with other works by Moore.
June 18, 2018
On the one hand, this is very different to the last Brian Moore book I read (set in Northern Ireland) and on the other hand, it's using the same form to tell a fascinating story. I have to use the word "thriller" to describe it because I can't think of an alternative. Perhaps its a "chase" rather than a thriller as some one who committed war crimes during WW2 is tracked down by the Gendamerie in France decades later. A fascinating story about the role of the Catholic Church in hiding such people. it gives a voice to the people we normally just want to despise to help us understand. Not condone but get some insight into why people do terrible things.
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