The Eighth Dwarf

Like any other Thomas novel, you can’t trust surface appearances. This goes double for Thomas’s espionage stories. The action moves quickly, but you can’t skim, you have to read everything. To skim means to miss something vital that will leave you confused and frantically paging backwards to find the part that will pull it all together for you. And as usual, there is a weird and unexpected ending to savor. Not so much a twist as a good dose of irony.

The most delicious part of reading this was the scenes where two people meet under certain circumstances and we all see what is presented, knowing that somehow it isn’t what it seems but not knowing how. Then in the next few paragraphs we see the real person and their motive and it show more is absolutely fascinating. Great stuff and I positively savored those passages. show less

Only the cynical survive in post-war Germany as various groups search for a Jewish assassin murdering hidden Nazis, mostly so they can get him to come and kill for them. Leading the charge is an ex-OSS man and his treacherous friend the Romanian dwarf. Thomas writes slick, fast, twisty thrillers.

Germany immediately after WWII. Think The Third Man or A German Requiem, but told from the American perspective. A bit less of the wise-ass Ross Thomas in this one, though he's clearly still here. But that difference in tone makes this novel stand out a bit in Thomas ouvre.