I'd like to read this but it's one of those large format paperbacks which I find awkward to hold. I've just picked up a smaller edition so this one can wing its way to someone else!

RELEASE NOTES:

As mentioned to Pakasanelly at today's Ipswich meet-up, i've picked this book up so many times before...it must be calling to me!

Finished! Review to follow

Quite a good complex thriller interweaving old unsolved mysteries and crimes with a modern non-detective bumbling around…so not unlike Da Vinci Code and The Labyrinth then!

In this case the back story concerns a Parisian resistance group, ‘The Round Table’, smuggling Jewish children away from the Nazi purges through a priory safe passage. Back in the future, in London, the dying Agnes (Jewish by birth, and part of The Round Table), her granddaughter Lucy, Brother Anselm - a cross between Cadfael and DI Lewis?! - and a motley cast of other characters try to piece together the truth from the chaotic 1940s in time for the trial of SS Schwermann. Yes very confusing, and that’s not a fraction of it.

Although all the elements are there for a good story, I didn’t find it entirely convincing; too many contrived events, coincidences and conspiracy theories. Almost nobody is who they seem, so the result is that you don’t care enough about them, even ones sympathy for the second and third generation innocents suffers from increasing number of twists and eventually revelation fatigue!

RELEASE NOTES:

Back-dated release note as I passed on to a friend and colleague (now ex-colleague!)

I know this went on an ickle holiday to Gran Canaria in March but I can't vouch for i's movements since :)