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The Chocolate Assassin by Peter Durantine (view source)
Revision as of 15:48, 29 October 2010
, 15:48, 29 October 2010no edit summary
In the final days of the Second World War, as the allied guns came ever closer, a young German was sent on a secret mission to America. He was only in his late teens but still resisted telling anyone, including the U-boat captain who took him across the Atlantic, about the nature of his mission. Fifty five years later the U-boat captain, Eric Hoest, long settled in the States, was murdered at his beach home. Samuel Grey, police detective and part-time student was called in to investigate the murder. The local police chief thought that the most likely murderer was the neighbour who had reported the crime, but Grey suspected that the truth was hidden somewhere in Hoest's background.
It's a complex investigation which will take Grey back across more than half a century of history and over to Europe to talk to the people who knew of Martin Hahn, the young German with a mission , or Eric Hoest, a man with his own views about how the war was being fought and lost. Not everyone wants to talk to Grey – even about events which happened more than half a century before, but how much of this is down to the fact that he's black and talking to people who believe in the purity of the Aryan race? And how much is about their guilt, not about what happened then, but about what's happening now? Above all, how do you track down someone who came to the USA secretly, so long ago?
When I started this book I was convinced that I would struggle to work out who was who and what was going on. That lasted for, oh, half a dozen pages and after that I struggled to put the book down. There's a wealth of background in there but the book wears it lightly. It's fascinating to read about Hershey and chocolate, about submarines and the problems they had with fuel, about how some ol-time Nazis survive against all the odds. There are some new angles on an era which has been overworked in the literary field. None of this would matter though if the plot wasn't good and the characters compelling.