Tuesday, 5 June 2012

The One from the Other by Phillip Kerr

The One From The Other

Reading this back to back with Resistance was probably a bit unfair to Kerr as the whole style and objective of his writing is different, I would try to resist a comparison of better or worse.

It is fast paced and everything you want in a crime thriller, my only worry was the times when it starts moralising which is something beyond the capacity of such a framework. It is again the risk, as there was in Resistance, of taking on history and especially a period that is just are the edge of memory.  Here the back drop is the search for Nazi war criminals and this remains a touchy subject for many, why some were punished and other rehabilitated, and even today old men are being unmasked and put on trial.  You can't talk of the Holocaust without speaking of the horror, but where Kerr is strong is showing that while there might be some bad "bad guys" there are no real "good guys", war and a system such as the Nazi state leave no one entirely innocent.

The story manages to escape being dragged down by its historical setting - but only just...

 

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