William Brodrick (1) (1960–)

The process of aging, inching towards death, shrinks a life, distilling it down to its most basic. The mind returns, effortlessly but urgently, to the defining moments of one’s life. And so, Agnes, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, returns to the days of her youth, picking through them, reevaluating them, and recording them in two school notebooks, purchased on the way home from the doctor’s office and her final death sentence. Slowly dieing of a degenerative neurological disorder and show more daily losing control of her body, Agnes archives her past on the thin notebook paper, hoping to explain herself to her family before it’s too late. As she begins to write, a former Nazi SS officer appears at a local priory, claiming the ancient right of sanctuary. The two enigmatic people, a cool, aloof grandmother and a suspected war criminal, are inexorably tied together by a mysterious past, one which threatens to redefine not only their lives but the lives of everyone they have touched.

The 6th Lamentation, a brilliant patchwork mystery, examines the nature of human perception. Every event, every spoken word captured on the page reshapes itself in the eyes and understanding of each different character. All of the people trying to flesh out the events of their past touch a different piece of the elephant, remembering and describing their lives in drastically different ways. And their misunderstandings lead them to fatal errors in judgment about each other and about the true nature of what transpired amongst them.

William Brodrick populated the novel with wildly fascinating, natural characters, filled with the common contradictions of human living. Among these characters, Anselm, a barrister turned monk, stands out. His faith is tenuous and alive, subject to the whims of everyday life but able to sustain him, even when he is unaware of its power over him.

As the mystery of the novel progresses, Brodrick attacks it from every angle, leading the reader to the same misjudgments that befall the characters in the book. The result is a captivating and dynamic story, woven in layers which catch the eye differently depending on the angle of view. On rare occasions, Brodrick confuses the narrative slightly with the complexity of his style, but drags the reader back to the story’s thread with a quick summary from one of the players. Ultimately, Brodrick’s intricate mystery overpowers neither the story nor his message. Rather, it serves to carry the story along, exhibiting ever more complex and disparate views of the past. Thus, the story’s conclusion is all the more sobering, with some characters finally reconciling themselves to the truth of their past and others trapped forever in faulty judgments, pursuing them to fatal ends. Brodrick reminds us that, as life necessarily winds down, reducing us, reconciliation depends upon constant and honest self evaluation.

4 ½ bones!!!! show less

This starts with the death of a QC, Elizabeth Glendenning. But, knowing her death might be approaching, she has put a number of things in motion, to draw her old colleague at Chambers, Anslem (now a monk), into finish the unraveling she's started. It gets a bit convoluted, and explores that area between black & white, where things are morally in shades of grey. A bit like life, it doesn't have a happy ending, it just has a point at which the story ceases to be told. Very intriguing.

This is a first novel? Hard to believe. I started this book at 10 pm and finished it at 1 am. I couldn't bring myself to stop reading - it was that good. Not only as a mystery, but as a novel in general. The ending is a little too formulaic, but a surprise which I must say I never saw coming. The ending is the reason the book gets a 9...I was a little let down at the way things sort of just a little too neatly fit. Other than that, it is a fine,no, an excellent novel. I highly recommend show more it.

Synopsis:
Set in England, present day, the story opens with Agnes Embleton, an elderly mother & grandmother, who has just received news that she's dying of motor neurone disease. She will, at some point the doctors tell her, lose all of her motor skills including the ability to talk. So before the disease develops into the final stages, Agnes feels this great need to share her past life with her granddaughter Lucy. She writes her story in a series of notebooks that she wants Lucy to read before Agnes dies. She reveals a life Lucy never even dreamed of.

That is plotline #1. Plotline #2:
Eduard Schwermann is a former SS officer who was stationed in France at the time of WWII. He has come to Larkwood Priory in England, and in speaking to one of the friars there, Father Anselm, he asks him what options are open to someone when it seems the entire world has turned against him. Anselm answers that in olden times, a man would claim Sanctuary. So Schwermann does just that. He claims sanctuary at Larkwood Priory, and somehow the media gets wind of the story. The Church realizes they have a dilemma here, so the head honchos send for Anselm, who in his pre-priestly life had been an attorney. They send him on a mission. As he gets more entangled in the lives of those affected by Schwermann, he finds he has a number of questions that cannot be easily answered. For example, why, toward the end of the war, did the church offer Schwermann, a former SS officer, sanctuary? Why did the British government allow Schwermann to get away and even furnish him with a new name? These two stories cross paths throughout the book. The mystery deepens as both Lucy and Anselm try to find the truth of what happened in the past -- but like one character in the novel warns, things are not what they seem.

The author does a great job not only in his characterizations...you never feel sorry for the bad guys here and you get drawn into the lives of most of the people in the novel. He deals with the Holocaust and its effects on his characters with compassion for the victims and disgust for its architects & those who carried out their orders. He also touches upon the role of politics, past & present, in the Catholic Church.

As I said, my only objection to this novel was that the end was a little too pat. Very contrived. The way the book reads, though, is perfect. It starts out slow, builds in tempo as you go along, then you find yourself unable to stop reading as the action builds. Had the ending moved along in this rhythm, it would have been a perfect novel.

Highly highly recommended. show less

At the request of an old friend, an English Gilbertine monk (and former lawyer) goes to Warsaw to help prepare a murder case against a Polish Communist secret police officer. He finds that the only witness, a woman arrested in 1951 and 1982 by the monster, was silenced when he told her who had informed on her the last time. She will talk only if the informer will be willing to have his or her identity revealed. She will not tell anyone who this person is.
At least that is the opening premise. show more Brodrick’s plot has several twists and turns, all of them believable. He is a good mystery writer and his Brother Anselm is a good detective. I will not remember this novel for its mystery. I will remember it for what I learned about a people put through several hells during a half century and how very different individuals reacted to it. Brodrick’s novels were described as “moral thrillers” in the blurbs and reviews I read before I bought it. Brother Anselm must think hard about good and evil during his investigation, in part to figure out responsibility and motive, in part to help as a Christian, said help offered even to the monster. I don’t think I’ve read a mystery before where previous readers and I felt a need to highlight words of insight thrown out by either Anselm or his prior. I do think that Brodrick overdid it, that he fell in love with his insights, that his book would have been better if it was maybe 5% shorter. But this was a worthwhile read. show less