The Statement

The hunt is on for an elusive Nazi war criminal in this “absorbing intellectual thriller that keeps you guessing . . . until the final page” (The New York Times).

For four decades Pierre Brossard has eluded capture as one of the most vicious SS officers in history. Condemned to death in absentia he’s tenuously protected by an intricate web of Nazi collaborators and an extreme right-wing faction of the Catholic Church. With nothing more than a suitcase and a prayer, Brossard seeks refuge in a monastery outside Salon-de-Provence. He knows the Committee for Justice is closing in. With every reason to fear his days are numbered, he realizes only one man can help him get away with murder: Commissaire Vionnet, a retired police chief who, forty years earlier, allowed Brossard to escape.

But two other men are collaborating as well: a hired assassin known only as T, and Cardinal Primate Delavigne, reformist of the postwar church. He’s as unstoppable as T, as ruthless as Brossard, and he can’t wait to play this game to its unpredictable end.

“An exciting, classic novel of hunter and hunted” inspired by a true story, The Statement was made into an award-winning film starring Michael Caine, Tilda Swinton, and Alan Bates (The Washington Post).