Justice not vengeance: the pursuit of a war criminal.

• Author: Normey, Rob

The Irish and Canadian novelist Brian Moore, who died January 10, 1999, will be missed greatly by his devoted readers. Moore maintained the ability to create consistently fine novels in a wide variety of genres and styles, featuring an assortment of vividly-realized characters. His second-last novel, The Statement (1995), is a thriller with a difference. Moore delivers with a continually gripping tale of the last days of the elderly Pierre Brossard, a man haunted by the fateful deeds he committed in the crucible of World War II. The tension rarely slackens as Brossard endeavours to remain one step ahead of both a French magistrate and a shadowy organization bent on vengeance (whose exact nature I won't reveal). Yet the novel also operates as a probing meditation on the nature of the evil of war crimes.

The work's short, intense, chapters thrust the reader into the dazzling light and punishing heat of the villages of southern France in summertime. We follow Brossard's weary path as his enemies bear down on him. In the opening scene, the anti-hero engineers an astonishing reversal of fortune upon his would-be assassin. In rummaging through his assailant's pockets, Brossard finds a statement which evidently was meant to be pinned on his corpse. It ends: "After 44 years of delays, legal prevarications and the complicity of the Catholic Church in hiding Brossard from justice, the dead are now avenged. This case is closed."

Brossard is forced to abruptly end his stay at a monastery and commences his desperate search for a new sanctuary, preferably at some other Catholic retreat. How indeed will his case be closed? What are the reasons for his orders to execute 14 Jews? We are given a stark portrait of Brossard as he continues his lonely life on the run. As he recollects the momentous events of his earlier life, we are both repelled and at times tempted to sympathize with this obstinate character.

We learn of his rigidly sectarian upbringing and his role as a military officer of the Milice, an extreme right-wing organization dedicated to saving France from the clutches of communists, Jews, and the members of the Resistance.

Alternating chapters take us into the minds of Brossard's pursuers and friends, namely those whose interest it is to keep him out of the clutches of the prosecution team. Two of the most significant characters in The Statement are the juge d'instruction, Annemarie Livi, and Colonel Roulx. The two form a team dedicated to...