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A review by xterminal
The Statement by Brian Moore
3.0
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.