John Lawton

I gave it a try, but made it only to page 110. I picked the book up as "an Inspector Troy thriller," but Inspector Troy made no appearance in the first quarter of the book, nor is this a thriller; in fact, the part that I read was a grim historical novel set in Vienna during the Nazi takeover and the beginning of the Jewish genocide. I'm aware of many of the ways that the Nazis stole the dignity from their victims before dispatching them, and I didn't enjoy reading about it again. And after show more reading it, I found the idea of this book somehow finally turning into "an Inspector Troy thriller," with the escapist lack of seriousness that the label implies, tasteless.

I kept going for 110 pages partly because the book *is* better written than your average murder mystery, and I wanted to know why the reviewer at the Chicago Tribune found Lawton as good as Le Carré. But ultimately, even the writing fell through for me as historical characters were introduced. The portrayal of Churchill was believable enough, but I found Lawton's Freud too sweet-tempered and gregarious for a man suffering from a painful, terminal cancer of the jaw, and Lawton's H.G. Wells was a mere caricature apparently designed to make socialists seem silly.

I admire Lawton's ambition, but it seems misplaced. show less

This book poses as a post-WWII spy thriller. But it's mostly a well-researched historical novel about 1) life in London's impoverished Eastside London circa WWII and 2) Berlin in the aftermath of WWII. The central characters are well-developed and the book is rich in historical detail. I quite relished it. However, if you are looking for a suspense-laden plotty spy thriller, this is probably not a book for you. The plot takes a third seat to the above-mentioned details, and the book's show more ambiguous resolution will leave most devotees of this genre dissatisfied.

For those reasons I tagged this book a 'literary thriller.' show less

My third of John Lawton's series about Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard. I love Lawton's books. At least, each one I have read, so far, and I cannot imagine, at this point, that he will ever let me down.

Lawton creates great characters. Not just the principle characters, but all sorts of minor players that they encounter. All of of them have a distinct personality and a "reality" that takes them beyond being mere plot devices. And you learn, with your first book, not to ignore ANYONE because show more even the most tangential person at one point may show up later in the book, or a later episode of the Troy sage.

That saga begins just prior to the outbreak of World War II, with Second Violin, and I recommend beginning with that book. (The books in the Inspector Troy series were not written and published in the chronological order of the stories, so don't set out to read them by the order of publication dates.

Lawton is a master of weaving actual historical characters into the fabric of his tale, always in a believable way. He also does a wonderful job of showing us what was like to live in London during "the Blitz," or flee from a mob of Brownshirts in pre-War Germany.

I intend to read the whole series, with relish, and am trying to space them out so the available material won't be exhausted to soon. My highest of recommendations. show less

A worthy member of the Troy canon, although perhaps not one to start with: much of Troy's backstory is taken as read, and indeed his shenanigans and foibles are less to the fore than usual.

The main interest of the novel, for me, lies in its clever interplay between fact and (historical) fiction, as in A Little White Death (a reading of the Profumo affair). Here Troy finds himself investigating a murder and the events in its wake which have to do with Soviet spies in England in the early show more 1950s. Yes, of course: Guy Burgess does make a cameo appearance.

Lawton as usual exploits his skill in the use of wry irony, as characters and their circumstances now well known are revealed in the novel not through the unfolding of events, but through Troy's super-sensitive reading of the situation.

Another special pleasure is Lawton's undoubted mastery of writing about music.

Happily, if rather surprisingly for Troy fans, our hero manages to contain his sometimes egregious sexual urges in this one. show less