"Durand was an obscure French crime writer, but this novel – impeccably translated into English by J. Maxwell Brownjohn – hit me like a freight train."
Durand was an obscure French crime writer, but this novel – impeccably translated into English by J. Maxwell Brownjohn – hit me like a freight train. It’s fundamentally a chase thriller, in which the chaser is the Gestapo agent Laemmle, representing the might of Hitler’s Third Reich, and the chased is an eleven-year-old French boy named Thomas, the only living person who knows the long strings of numbers that can unlock his late great-grandfather’s bank accounts, which contain hundreds of millions that the Nazis want. Laemmle is a gourmet and an epicene, but cruel and ruthless; Thomas is scared and powerless, but a genius savant, who calculates his next moves like a chess master. The close calls and near misses create breathless tension inside a dreamlike narrative that reflects young Thomas’s confusion. But what stood out most for me was Thomas’s inherited band of loyal family retainers, all Spanish peasants, always watching from the shadows. They formed a preternaturally, implacably reliable and competent force of nature. In one scene, Thomas, eating an apple, threatens Laemmle, who scoffs at the apparent emptiness of the threat. So Thomas, despite not having seen his Spaniards for days, tosses the apple high in the air, and it’s immediately shattered by a rifle shot from a distant hillside. Almost supernatural, but I loved it.
Comments from our Guest Editor, Lee Child
| Primary Genre | Crime and Mystery |
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