The Statement
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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'A thriller with a difference. The plot is as taught as the prose is tight - both qualities reminiscent of Graham Greene' - Sunday Express
'Once you have opened its first page you won't be able to stop reading. A superbly plotted story with a brilliant twist' - A.N. Wilson
'Brian Moore is a man of profound human insight as well as a master storyteller ... the most subtle, most readable, least pushy of guides' - Sunday Telegraph
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THE SUPERB THRILLER FROM BRIAN MOORE WHICH INSPIRED THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MICHAEL CAINE AND TILDA SWINTON
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Pierre Brossard is on the run. For his life. From a determined squad of unknown hit-men. From his former 'friends'. From his past. Condemned to death in absentia by French courts for crimes against humanity during the war, he has been in hiding for over forty years. Now, perhaps, justice will be done.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While Moore's new novel can be called a thriller, it is in fact another of his stunning moral visions of modern life (Lies of Silence; The Colors of Blood) that have marked him as an astute, impassioned chronicler of 20th-century spiritual malaise. Here he has taken inspiration from a real situation, that of a former pro-Nazi Vichy military officer, Maurice Papon, who for four decades evaded punishment for his complicity in WWII crimes against Jews. Moore's antihero is called Pierre Brossard. He is introduced to us as an apparently nervous old man who travels only with a suitcase and a prayer. But he is soon revealed as a ruthless, twisted fascist whose piousness hides a vicious core of bigotry. Under the protection of an intricate web of aging Nazi collaborators and extreme conservatives entrenched in the Catholic Church, he has eluded capture for 44 years. We follow him as a secret terrorist organization attempts to exact final vengeance for his wartime crimes and discover that not one ounce of contrition shadows his mind. A wily and murderous veteran of the game, Brossard eliminates his would-be assassins and re-exposes his case to the world, with shocking results. The chase is riveting, and Moore's exploration of the chilling self-righteousness behind Brossard's reasoning is provocative and disturbing, showing how hatred can spew its own, distorted rationality. In the end, Moore extrapolates from real life a masterful puzzle of spiritual and historical dimensions.
