The Statement: 8

Brian Moore's "The Statement" is a religious-political thriller par excellence. From start to finish, the pace never lets up. The refugee war criminal with blood on his hands is harboured by friends in high places and hunted relentless by enemies seeking revenge for the war crimes he perpetrated during the Nazi era in France. His razor-sharp antennae goes into overdrive each time danger approaches, with surprising results. That he is a ruthless criminal with a dangerously flawed conscience there is no doubt, so when he comes to his sticky end, there's only the feeling that he's had his just deserts. But has justice been done ? What about his powerful protectors ? Aren't they just as guilty, if not more ? Moore's insightful portrayal of the Catholic Church, its monastries, underground sects and secretive subsidiary organs as human institutions is a powerful reminder that the Church, however catholic, is ultimately comprised of individuals, each with his own thoughts and beliefs, and as long as its members remain also members of secular society, the Church cannot stop them from acting in secret according to the dictates of their own conscience, however flawed or wrongminded.Moore is a master of this genre. "The Statement" has all the ingredients of a first class thriller that will satisfy his fans and win over lots more.

The setting is southern France, 1989. Pierre Brossard is a man on the run for his life. For over 40 years he has been in hiding, counting on the complicity of the Catholic Church to perpetuate his anonymity. During WWII, Brossard was a member of the "milice" and as part of his duties at the time he personally shot 14 Jews in a clandestine pogrom and subsequently co-operated in the sending of many Jews from France to extermination camps. Through his many connections, Brossard managed at one point to obtain an official political pardon for his war-crimes, but now (in 1989) the charge of "crimes against humanity" has been added... with the result that even some of his strongest supporters have turned against him. There is a renewed interest in his case; he's running out of places to hide... and he has more pursuers than ever before.Moore has written a great meditation on the historical processes and conditions that make war crimes or crimes against humanity so difficult to pursue. Brossard is demonstrative of the expertise with which such "criminals" are able to exploit various forces of compromise, immunity, asylum and refuge. Many questions are subtly raised by this book. The Church here affords a sort of refuge to the retributive justice that the outside world demands (concerning Brossard's obvious past crimes/sins)... but what of Brossard's inner torment? Even if the Church offers (grants) Divine pardon... does the pardon of man/society necessarily follow? Should it? (I hope not). What do we make of priestly absolution when it proves ineffective as conscience-cleanser? Is this question being answered when, with his final breath, Brossard tries to be penitent and sense God's pardon, and all he is afforded is a final look (in his mind's eye) at the people that he has killed?It is a story told by a genius writer, Moore didn't even know how to disappoint a reader. The short quick chapters make you quickly forget whatever else you had to do today... you won't stop flipping the pages till your done. He changes the "I" of his narrator constantly, and never loses the reader for a moment. I've read almost all of his many books and consider this among his very best. This is a book that had significant meaning for the author (a sort of purging of his own shame at his father's conservative Catholoic belief and initial support of totalitarianism during WWII). Moore commented concerning "The Statement" that: "I never thought that novels changed the world. I still don't believe that. But I just thought that this was a story which really should come out." It should.

Moore's novel literally starts with a bang as Pierre Brossard, a 70 year old Catholic Frenchman, outguns an assassin who has been sent to kill him. On the assassin's body he finds a statement from the "Committee for Justice for the Jewish Victims of Dombey", claiming responsibility for the execution of Brossard. It turns out that Brossard has been a fugitive for over forty years, having participated in the murder of 14 Jews in 1944. During that time he has been protected by sympathetic members of the Catholic Church, provided with funds, hiding places, transportation and false papers. At one point, they even secured a presidential pardon for him, but then he was charged with a "crime against humanity", against which the pardon offers no dispensation. But now times have changed and many of those in the Church and in government who protected Brossard have passed on and others simply want him out of the way, lest his prosecution serve as a model for subsequent trials. Moreover, the succeeding generation of officials does not bear any sympathy towards him, so they too are on his trail. What follows is a thrilling chase, as Brossard is pursued by Church, State and the shadowy committee and by "friend" and foe alike. Beyond the basic thriller premise, Moore also offers an examination of the often ignored war guilt of France. Initially it seems possible to feel some sympathy for Brossard and the other aging collaborators, to the extent that they were motivated by anti-Communism and anti-modernism. But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that, at heart, they were driven as much by genuine hatred of Jews as by any other less repulsive motives. Moore based Brossard on an actual person, Paul Touvier, and the story's essentials, from the assistance of the Church to the presidential pardon, are all historical, though Touvier was captured in 1989 and died in prison. These, of course, are facts that stand in stark contrast to the myth that DeGaulle consciously chose to cultivate instead, of the French people as proud heroes of the Resistance, standing firm against the Nazi oppressor. In fact, just as Jonah Goldhagen's great book Hitler's Willing Executioner's (see review) has forced us to rethink the question of how limited was German responsibility for the Holocaust, it is long past time to reconsider whether Vichy France was truly an aberration or whether it was in some sense a manifestation of French popular opinion. This is especially important in light of the concurrent rise in present day France of both the Muslim population and the extremist Le Pen Party. As France, a nation obsessed by the concepts of Frenchness and French blood, approaches the moment where the classic Gallic Catholic French will be outnumbered by immigrant Muslims, it is necessary to either anticipate the possibility that this will bring genocidal violence or else to, once again, close our eyes and feign surprise when presented with a fait accompli. Brian Moore brilliant

In this thought-provoking novel, Moore examines the reality of differing viewpoints. There are definitely more than one or two ways to view his protagonist, and Moore gives us a myriad. He brings the reader into the heads of the man's prospective assassins, the clerics who have been duped by the man - some through genuine gentleness of spirit and forgiveness, some through sympathetic prejudices - for decades, his disillusioned wife, his supposed friends and accomplices, even the hunted man himself, with his half-self-deceptions, his hatreds, his rationalizations, his nightmares. Many facets of human morality, thought, and feeling are all here. All in all, it is a coolly told thriller, with injustice piled on injustice, and convincingly real people making the kind of compromised judgments that real life would force. Many of them start with the same basic premises, but end up making a completely different judgment of what is right. This is not a simple story. It is also, as are all the Moore books I have read, impossible to put down.

Brian Moore has succeeded in writing a story regarding war crimes in France. The whole story is centered around the death of fourteen Jews at Dombey and their executioner named Brossard. This fugutive from justice has been protected at the highest levels of government and by the Catholic Church. All is done in the guise of some sort of false ideals of French nationalism. The story is an intriging one. There are the Chevaliers, Catholic clergy and monastic orders all protecting Brossard. In the end, it is surprising to see who actually brings this man to justice, unfortunately all for the wrong reasons, because you see Brossard's death masks the crimes of others. This book is a great one to read and I would recommend it to anyone