The Statement, Moore - B

       This 30-year old novel is set in France in the late 1980's. Pierre Brossard, seventy, is still on the run after 40 years in hiding, and with two death sentences on his record. He was part of the police in the south of the country who persecuted Vichy's Jews and sent them off to their death. He is hidden by the church, and moves from one monastery to another. Like the previously mentioned Journal recommendation, this novel too is very introspective. It has many of the usual thriller highlights, but is really a long conversation that Brossard has with himself about Vichy standing up for all things French, and Gaullism being nothing more than political correctness in the face of communism. Similarly, the churchmen who take him in discuss the need to preserve the morals of the past, the France of the WWI era before the socialists dominated the government. For Brossard, killing Jews simply seemed to be the right thing to do, and for the churchmen, protecting Brossard is their opportunity to ignore modernity. Unfortunately for Brossard, his long term protector in the national police hierarchy has decided he's expendable and too much of a risk.