“The Jewish Policeman” by Jonathan Dunsky

Before Adam Lapid had been a private detective living in early 1950s Tel Aviv, he’d been a police detective in Budapest, Hungary. Then the Germans came in 1944; Adolph Eichmann himself supervised the deportation of 440,000 people directly to Auschwitz. Among them were Adam, his wife, his two young daughters, and his mother. Adam was the only survivor. 

After the defeat of the Nazis, Adam made his way to Munich. He’s living in a Jewish displacement camp, self-governing but overseen by the American Army (Munich was in the American zone after the war). Adam is not simply existing; he’s looking for former Nazis who think they’ve escaped justice. And he finds one, who soon finds himself strangled in the cellar of a ruined building.

 

Adam also unexpectedly finds himself employed. The camp director asks Adam to investigate a murder, not to take over the police function, but to look into a single death. A resident had been stabbed to death in the camp’s radio room. Because only camp residents had access to the camp, that the killer would be Jewish. And that made it worse; too many Jews had already died during the war, and it seemed an obscenity that another Jew would die at the hands of one of his own.

 

Adam investigates; virtually no clues exist. He travels down blind alleys, spends countless hours investigating, and keeps dodging the man who was appointed the official policeman who resents what Adam has been asked to do. 

 

Jonathan Dunsky

The Jewish Policeman is the ninth Adam Lapid mystery by Jonathan Dunsky. All of these mysteries are thought-provoking; this one is even more than its predecessors. Dunsky more than  touches upon the unsettling idea that people who experience horrific persecution and murder can sometimes become like their persecutors and murderers. 

 

Dunsky is best known for his Adam Lapid mystery stories, with nine published: Ten Years Gone, The Dead Sister, The Auschwitz Violinist, A Debt of Death, A Deadly Act, The Auschwitz Detective, A Death in Jerusalem, In That Sleep of Death, and now The Jewish Policeman. He’s also published The Favor: A Tale of Friendship and Murder; Family Ties; Tommy’s Touch: A Fantasy Love Story; the short story “The Unlucky Woman,” and other works. He was born in Israel, served four years in the Israeli Army, lived in Europe for several years, and currently lives in Israel with his family. He has worked in various high-tech firms and operated his own search optimization business.

 

The Jewish Policeman is every bit as good as the earlier Adam Lapid mysteries. Dunsky captures the chaos and desperation of post-war Germany (Hershey Bars and American cigarettes are like currency), and he tells a good story of conflicted motives, illegal justice, and settling old scores.

 

Related:

My review of Ten Years Gone by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of The Unlucky Woman by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of The Dead Sister by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of The Auschwitz Violinist by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of A Debt of Death by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of A Deadly Act by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of Grandma Rachel’s Ghosts by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of The Auschwitz Detective by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of A Death in Jerusalem by Jonathan Dunsky.

My review of In That Sleep of Death by Jonathan Dunsky.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Lucky to Be Grateful and A Passage Through the Dark– Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn and Katy Carl at Mere Orthodoxy review Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story by Wendell Berry.

 

Why Cormac McCarthy Stands Alone Among Novelists – Will Hoyt at Front Porch Republic.

 

Writing a Novel at Burger King – Lana McAra at In the Writer’s Chair (via LinkedIn). 

"Bones Buried Deep" by Emma Jameson

It’s June of 1940. Dunkirk has happened. France had surrendered. The day of the formal surrender – June 22, 1940 – is approaching. And in Britain, there’s a collective holding of breath. What happens now? 

For Dr. Benjamin Bones, working in the village of Birdswing in Cornwall, what happens is another murder. A body is found in a stream nearby. It’s finally identified as that of a young man from Plymouth, and he’s been kicked and beaten to death. The case takes on a different overtone when the body is identified – a young Jewish man, the sole support of his young brothers and sisters.

 

The discovery brings out the best and the worst in the local residents. Dr. Bones, and his great love Lady Juliet Linton, are surprised by the depth of anti-Semitic feeling from the people they like and thought they knew. It seems particularly virulent among the more upper-class crowd who gather at the Duke of Cornwall Hotel in Plymouth, already infiltrated by Lady Juliet’s errant husband working undercover for the British government. But what happened to the young man?

 

Emma Jameson

Bones is joined by the official investigator, a detective from Plymouth who himself is Jewish and knows firsthand what discrimination is like in the police department. Lady Juliet is not to be left out, and she finds innovative ways to investigate on her own.

 

Bones Buried Deep  is the fourth of four Dr. Benjamin Bones mysteries by British mystery author Emma Jameson, who’s also written the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mystery series (all set in London and have something to do with the word “blue”). 

 

This installment in the Dr. Bones series, like its predecessors, is leavened by humor (Jameson has created a great comic detective with Lady Juliet). And humor is definitely needed in what would be a dark tale indeed without it, a tale of vicious discrimination, death, black marketing, and the overhand of war.

 

Related:

Blue Murder by Emma Jameson.

 Something Blue by Emma Jameson.

 Black & Blue by Emma Jameson.

 Blue Blooded by Emma Jameson.

 Blue Christmas by Emma Jameson.

 Untrue Blue by Emma Jameson. 

 London Blue by Emma Jameson.

 Bones in the Blackout by Emma Jameson.

 Bones at the Manor House by Emma Jameson.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Technological Poverty – Matthew Walther at The Lamp.

 

A Quiet Refusal to Compromise – Elizabeth Corey at Law & Liberty.

 

The Novel That Kept a British Prime Minister Up All Night – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Art is the Signature of Man – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Why Essex is Britain’s most right-wing county – Daniel Dieppe at the Critic Magazine.

"The Prodigal of Leningrad" by Daniel Taylor

I’m trying to remember when I first became interested in Russian history. Most likely, when I was 10, and one of my Christmas presents (my mother knew me) was a Horizon Caravel book entitled Russia Under the Czars. I must have read it a dozen times. And I still have it. 

My senior year in high school, I discovered Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, and The First Circle. In college, I took two semesters of Russian history, and I was glad I knew more about Russia’s past than most people. The professor was a great lecturer; he was also an unapologetic defender of the Soviet regime. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

Is Carney’s Davos sermon the way forward? – David Robertson at Christian Today.

 

Only Mozart – Joseph Sobran at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

How Holocaust Denial Became Mainstream – Simon Sebag Montefiore at The Free Press.

“Matisse at War” by Christopher Gorham

June 1940: The nations of Europe have folded like a house of cards before the German blitzkrieg. Only Britain remains unconquered. France has fallen and is soon divided into two regions – northern France under the direct control of the Nazis, and the Vichy puppet state in southern France.  

Imagine the panic, especially among Jews but also anyone deemed a potential enemy of Germany – poets, artists, writers, intellectuals, academics. Into that group fall two of the best-known contemporary artists – Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Picasso remains in Paris. Matisse meanders his way to southern France, eventually landing in Nice. Friends and family urge him to leave, but if he does, he says, what will be left of France?  

 

It's an awkward time in the artist’s personal life. He happened to be in Paris when France surrendered to finalize divorce proceedings brought by his wife Amelie, and he fled the city like so many others. He also needs surgery, without which he will likely die. Doctors in Lyon will eventually perform it in 1941. 

 

Henri Matisse, about the time of the war

Some biographers have suggested that Matisse collaborated with the Vichy government. Christopher Gorham came to a very different conclusion. After all, all three of Matisse’s grown children were involved in some kind of resistance activity. His daughter Marguerite would be arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, tortured, and packed off to a prison camp in Germany. His son Jean was in the Resistance. His son Pierre lived in New York; he was helping artists and especially Jewish ones like Marc Chagall get settled and established in exile.

 

The suggestion of collaboration against their father didn’t make sense. Gorham took a deeper look and did extensive research. The result is Matisse at War: Art and Resistance in Nazi-Occupied France.

 

Gorham tells the story of how Matisse spent the war years. He describes how the artist, unable to stand to paint, turned to the scissors and his famous cut-out designs. He tracks Matisse’s major movements, visitors and the friends who came to see him, and the role played by Lydia Delectorskaya, who became his business manager, housekeeper, muse, and often-used model. He explains how Nice was, for a time while controlled by the Italians, an oasis of safety and especially for Jews, and how it came to an end.

 

Christopher C. Gorham

The book also tells the supporting stories of Matisse’s children and ex-wife Amelie. Marguerite is arrested in 1944, after passing coded information on D-Day to the Resistance in Brittany. Jean evaded arrest, but he was part of the Resistance as well. Amelie was also arrested and imprisoned for typing Resistance materials. And Pierre in New York was the terminus for an underground railroad operation that smuggled artists to safety. In fact, Pierre may have singlehandedly if not largely been responsible for what became known as modern art in New York City and the city’s emergence as a world art center.

 

Matisse at War turns out to be a fascinating, often riveting read about art, war, Nazi thefts, collaborators, victims, people who risked everything to fight, and an ailing, elderly artist who chose to stay in occupied France and do the one thing he knew to do – make art.

 

Gorham previously published The Confidante: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America, the story of Anna Marie Rosemberg. He’s written for the Washington Post, Literary Hub, Paper Brigade, and many other publications, and is a frequent speaker at conferences, literary events, and book club gatherings. He lives in Boston.

 

For a related story (at Dancing Priest), see how I came to hear Gorham speak just last week and briefly met him.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

What happened to literary politicians? – Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri at The Critic Magazine.

 

Massive New Map Reveals 300,000 Km of Ancient Roman Roads – Michelle Starr at Science Alert.

 

Union Chapel, Islington – Live Music and a Nonconformist History – A London Inheritance.

“Bones at the Manor House” by Emma Jameson

Dr. Benjamin Bones, assigned at the beginning of World War II to be the resident physician for the village of Birdswing in Cornwall and nearby environs, finds himself in a second murder investigation. The first (Bones in the Blackout) was been that of his wife on the evening they first arrived in the village. This time, he’s called to examine a body at Belsham Manor, which looks like suicide. Or, as Dr. Bones soon realizes, a murder designed by the manor’s servants to look like suicide.  

Lady Juliet, who lives in Birdswing in her own manor with her mother, has discovered she’s attracted to the doctor and had assisted him in helping solve the first murder. She has her own problems, however, having been deserted by a worthless cad of a husband who married her for her money and then promptly disappeared. Everyone gets surprised, however, when the husband unexpectedly shows up, and Lady Juliet learns she must continue the pretense of a happy marriage for wartime security purposes.

 

Emma Jameson

The murder victim has had a reputation of being something of a ladies’ man, except no one knows in this case if the lady in question is a servant or the lady of the manor. The local air raid warden is doubling as a police detective (there’s a manpower shortage, after all) and is ready to arrest the man’s wife, who aids in the investigation by confessing. Dr. Bones is convinced the confession is designed to protect her own family. 

 

Bones at the Manor House is the second of four Dr. Benjamin Bones mysteries by British mystery author Emma Jameson, who’s also written the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mystery series (all set in London and have something to do with the word “blue”). This second novel in the series is fast-paced and highly readable, with something of a “locked room” air about it, but I found credulity stretched a bit when the scientific Dr. Bones seems to rather eagerly join into a séance and using a Ouija Board.

 

But the story is fun and officially a “cozy” read, with virtually no violence (other than the finding of the dead man). But a fan of the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mysteries, I’m looking forward to the next two in the Dr. Bones series.

 

Related:

Ice Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Murder by Emma Jameson.

 

Something Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Black & Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Blooded by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Christmas by Emma Jameson.

 

Untrue Blue by Emma Jameson. 

 

London Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Bones in the Blackout by Emma Jameson.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Mr. Twiddle goes west – Jeffrey Streeter at English Republic of Letters.

 

Brits have not lost their appetite for freedom – Emma Schubart at The Critic Magazine.

Poets and Poems: Christine Rhein and "Wild Flight"

Christine Rhein and her sister were born in America and raised in the Detroit area. Christine herself made a home there, developing a career as a mechanical engineer in the automotive industry. Yet one of the formative influences of her life happened decades before and thousands of miles away. 

Her father, Horst Misch, was born in Silesia in 1931. Originally part of Poland, the area had passed to the Hapsburg Empire in 1335 and then to Prussia in 1742. People of German heritage had lived there for seven centuries. To the south was the Sudeten Mountains, a region carved out of the Habsburg empire after World War I and incorporated into the new country of Czechoslovakia. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

“In Refusal of Politics,” poem by Joseph Bottum and “Alas, Madam, for Sealing of a Kiss,” poem by Thomas Wyatt–Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Achilles – poem by Jerry Barrett at Gerald the Writer.

 

Ode to Pumpkin – poem by Megan Willome.

 

Poetic Responses to Turmoil – Sarah Reardon at Front Porch Republic.

“The Memoirs of Andre Trocme”

Andre Trocme (1901-1971) may be a name largely forgotten today, but he and his wife Magda deserve to be remembered for a faith-fueled courage in almost insurmountable circumstances. What may help revive and further their memory is the publication of his memoirs in English, appropriately titled The Memoirs of Andre Trocme.  

The work, translated by Patrick Henry and Mary Anne O’Neil and edited by Patrick Cabanel (who also first edited the work in French in 2020), is a conversational, straightforward account of Trocme’s life through the 1950s. He continued to work on the memoir until his death in 1971, but it wasn’t published until nearly 50 years later. Cabanel had the good fortune of using a manuscript containing Magda’s annotations and marginal notes.

 

Trocme was seemingly a man of contradictions. Born into a well-to-do family of a linen curtain manufacturer in Saint-Quentin near the Belgian border, he found himself early on drawn to the religious life. His father was French; his mother, who died when he was young, was German. His parents were firm Protestants in a Catholic region and country. His region of France was occupied by the Germans in World War I; he tells of his embarrassment when his German cousins came to visit. But as the war front shifted, the town’s population was gradually deported to Belgium. But his descriptions of life under German occupation are vivid and often harrowing.

 

The Trocme family about 1930

After the war, the Trocmes landed in Paris; their home in Saint-Quentin had to be substantially rebuilt after suffering damage by the German forces. Andre did his military service, finding himself for a time stationed in Morocco. But again the contradiction: he was also a pacifist and conscientious objector; he would not use a gun to defend or attack. This lifelong philosophy often thrust him into predicaments on both sides in World War II.

 

He decides to enter the ministry and studies at the School of Theology at the Sorbonne in Paris. He wins a scholarship to Union Theological Seminary in New York, and, while studying there, finds work as a tutor of French for two boys in a wealthy family. The family was the Rockefellers; the boys were David, who became CEO and chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, and Winthrop, who would become governor of Arkansas. And it’s at Union Seminary that he meets Magda. 

 

The memoir goes on the describe his return to France, pastoral training, the births of their children, and the family’s eventual assignment to a church in Le Chambon, southwest of Lyon in south-central France. Trocme’s pacifism raises questions everywhere, but it becomes especially intense as war moves closer and closer. 

 

And then events seem to happen almost at once – the defeat of France, the collapse of the government, the German occupation of northern France, and the Petain government in southern France. Le Chambon sees floods of refugees, including Jewish refugees from Paris and Germany. When the Petain government begins to facilitate roundups of the Jews, it is Reformed pastor Trocme who organizes hiding them, helping them escape, and moving them around to avoid capture. The police and the Germans always suspect what he’s up to, and he even finds himself arrested and imprisoned for a time (he was arrested in his own home at a time when the family had given refuge to a Jewish man; the man wasn’t caught). He has to go into hiding for a time, when he learns of a plot to kill him. 

 

For their work in hiding and saving Jews, whose number reached the thousands, Andre and Magda were later recognized by Israel as Yad Vashem, the righteous Gentiles who risked their own lives and those of others to save Jews from capture, arrest, and death. 

 

The memoir ends in the 1950s, as the Trocmes are establishing the House of Reconciliation in Paris, an educational establishment devoted to Christian education for peace.

 

Trocme writes in a simple, lively, and almost entertaining style, telling his stories much like a novel or fiction. It’s sometimes astonishing to read what he and his family experienced including personal tragedy, recounting a life lived through some of the most tumultuous times in recent history. While sometimes encountering doubt, it was his faith in God that he held tightly to and that he no doubt today would credit for explaining how he and his family survived. 

 

The Memoirs of Andre Trocme is an eye-opening, thoroughly enjoyable read, a story of courage and faith filtered through history.

Some Monday Readings

 

Walt Disney and the American Civil War – Tom Elmore at Emerging Civil War.

 

Britain: Surveillance is sapping our humanity – Peter White at UnHerd.

 

Illiteracy is a Policy Choice – Kelsey Piper at The Argument. 

“Bones in the Blackout” by Emma Jameson

Dr. Benjamin Bones is a young, married physician who volunteers for active duty when Germany invades Poland in September 1939. He expects to be assigned to the medical crops. Instead, his occupation is deemed critical, and he’s sent to the small village of Birdswing in Cornwall. Coincidentally, it’s the same town his wife left some years before – and never returned. She’s also leaving behind in London the man she’d been having an affair with – and it looks like this assignment will be make-it-or-break-it for their marriage. 

Except events never proceed that far. As soon as they arrive in the town that first evening, when everything is blacked out because of the war, a hit-and-run lorry seemingly comes from nowhere and plows into the couple, jilling here and shattering the young doctor’s leg.  

 

It looked like an accident, but Ben has his doubts. As he recovers, he finds an anonymous note left on his pillow at the pub where’s staying. The writer is apologizing for Ben’s injury; the only target had been his wife.

 

Ben begins to look into his wife’s death and the death of another young woman, whose death also appeared to be an accident involving leaking gas in her home. He’s assisted by Lady Juliet, who lives in the local manor, who develops a crush on the young doctor without him realizing it. As he gets deeper into recent local history and the secrets lying buried, he finds that his dead wife had plenty of enemies in the village. And the danger may not be over.

 

Bones in the Blackout is the first of four Dr. Benjamin Bones mysteries by British mystery author Emma Jameson, who’s also written the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mystery series (all set in London and have something to do with the word “blue”). I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the “Blue” series, and I thought I’d try her other detective series. I’m glad I did – Jameson seems to catch the early years of World War II on the home front exactly right and Dr. Bones is just as engaging as her contemporary London police detectives.

 

Bones in the Blackout is a thoroughly enjoyable story, full of unexpected twists and turns and highlighted by a thriller of an ending. I’m looking forward to reading the next three in the series.

 

Related:

Ice Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Murder by Emma Jameson.

 

Something Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Black & Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Blooded by Emma Jameson.

 

Blue Christmas by Emma Jameson.

 

Untrue Blue by Emma Jameson. 

 

London Blue by Emma Jameson.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Don’t trust the BBC on America – Chris Bayliss at The Critic Magazine.

 

Liberalism Without Illusions – William Galston at Democracy.

 

When the Internet Was a Place – Raleigh Adams at Front Porch Republic.

 

An American Greatness: Willa Cather’s “O, Pioneers!” –Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.

The Loyalist Who Gave Birth to His Nightmare – Richard Briles Moriarty at Journal of the American Revolution. 

The Bookshops of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

 

Long-Forgotten Rubens Found in Paris Mansion – Jo Lawson-Tancred at Artnet.

World War II Had Its Poets, Too

Eighty years ago this month, World War II ended in Europe. Three months later, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced the Japanese Empire to surrender as well. The most destructive war in human history had ended. It was also the deadliest – between 40 million and 50 million people died as a direct result of the war. 

The Great War, or World War I, is the war associated with poets. And soldiers and civilians alike did write some incredible poetry. The war brought the Victorian and Edwardian world to a close and can be said to have given birth to the Modern period. Poets, especially those in Britain, chronicled the march to war, the horrific battles and trench warfare, and the aftermath that often seemed so hollow. Some of the most beautiful and startling poems in the English language were written during that war, poems like “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen.

 

If anything, poetry and its creation were even more present and prolific during World War II, and yet you might be hard-pressed to name a single poem associated with the war. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Your Prayer – poem by David Whyte.

 

Offsite – Poem by George Witte at The New Criterion.

 

Michelle Young on Telling the Story of Rose Valland, the WWII Hero and “Art Spy” – Morgan Leigh Davies at CrimeReads.

 

“To the Cuckoo,” poem by William Wordsworth – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Ad Ministram,” poem by William Makepeace Thackeray – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

"The Last Bookshop in London" by Madeline Martin

Grace Bennett travels to London with her best friend Viv. The two young women are determined to leave their small town behind and find work in the big city. They already have a place to live – with the best friend of Grace’s deceased mother. And it’s their landlady who helps Grace find a job – with an East End bookseller who doesn’t seem to want the help.  

And Grace knows nothing about books; she’s not even a regular reader. But she does know marketing, and she will soon set about transforming the bookstore, even if it’s not one of the better know bookshops like those on Paternoster Row near St. Paul’s Cathedral.

 

But it’s August 1939. War is declared within less of a month of the women’s arrival. They watch the children transported to safety in the countryside, the sandbags being positioned, the rules and regulations for blackout curtains and lights. At first, little changes; the first nine months are often referred to as the “phony war.” After France surrenders in June of 1940, they all know the Germans will be coming for London and Britain. 

 

Madeline Martin

Grace meets a rather charming customer who suggests she read The Count of Monte Cristo. She puts it off until she hears he’s being assigned for duty. She soon finds that books aren’t just about marketing but also about visiting and becoming part of entirely new worlds. And she can’t wait to share what she knows with the customer, assuming he survives the war. So she finds another way to share what she’s reading – during the great London Blitz.

 

The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin is Grace’s story. Based on what happened in London during the famous Blitz, it’s a story of resilience, bookstores, books, and the courage to keep going on in spite of what look like insurmountable conditions. 

 

Martin has published more than 40 books in the historical novel and historical romance genres. Her series includes Borderland Ladies (six books), Borderland Rebels (five books), Highland Passions (four books), Wedding a Wallflower (several series), Matchmaker of Mayfair (six books), The London School for Ladies (three books), Heart of the Highlands (three books), and The Mercenary Maidens (three books), as well as several standalone works. She lives in Florida with her family.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

“Managerial Bureaucracy’s Threat to Democracy and Humanity” – speech by N.S. Lyons at the Civitas Canada Conference., May 3, 2025.

 

St. Louis Art Museum, Nighttime – photographs by Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina.

 

The lost palaces of Henry VIII – Monica Woods at Discover Britain.

 

The decline of the great literary name – Jacob Phillips at The Critic Magazine.

 

How “Puff (The Magic Dragon)” Transformed into a Timeless Treasure – Jason Clark at This Is the Day.

"The Muralist" by B.A. Shapiro

It’s 1939, and Europe is on the verge of war. Alizée Benoit, a young woman born in France but now a naturalized American, is an artist working in New York City and eking out an existence because of the artists program with the Work Projects Administration. She works with a group of artists in a warehouse, unknowns all but who will eventually remake American art: Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, and Jackson Pollock.

They’re all painting murals for the WPA and struggling with their own art. It is Alizée who provides the creative spark that will eventually transform these artists into international celebrities. And she is increasingly driven by what is happening in Europe to her fellow Jews, including members of her immediate family – her brother, her aunts, uncles, and cousins. She’s spending increasing amounts of time trying to find visas but, like so many others, discovering the immigration roadblocks being erected by Breckenridge Long, once of Franklin Roosevelt’s top State Department officials. 

 

When the war starts, Alizée’s desperation becomes almost manic, leading to her involvement in an attempted assassination.

 

It’s also 2015. Alizée’s story is told in parallel with that of her great-niece Danielle, the granddaughter of her brother Henri. Seventy-five years after the start of World War II, Danielle works in the art department of the auction house Christie’s in New York. And she’s always wondered what happened to her great-aunt, who disappeared in 1940. The mystery deepens when Danielle is handed a square cut from a larger work, one she believes was painted by her great-aunt. Fellow workers think it might be an early Rothko or Krasner. Danielle thinks otherwise, and she’s determined to prove that the mural fragment was painted by her great-aunt – and to find out what happened to her.

 

B.A. Shapiro

The story of Alizée and Danielle are told in The Muralist, a 2016 novel by B.A. Shapiro. It’s a story peopled by both historical characters and fictional ones, describing the birth of and inspirations for Abstract Expressionism, how the war in Europe increasingly encroached upon America, and how prevalent anti-Semitism was in the America of the 1930s and 1940s.

 

The Muralist includes well-known political figures of the pre-war and war eras, including Brecjkenridge Long, Eleanor Roosevelt, and even a cameo appearance by Franklin Roosevelt. It’s generally a satisfying novel and an engaging read, even if you’re not a fan of Abstract Expressionism. For some reason I couldn’t identify, the scenes involving Eleanor Roosevelt seemed less satisfying, possibly because she comes across as more two-dimensional. 

 

Shapiro has published several bestselling literary thrillers, including Metropolis (2022), The Collector’s Apprentice, and The Art Forger. A sociologist y training and career, she has also worked as a systems analyst / statistician and headed the Boston office of a software development firm. She also worked as an adjunct professor in sociology at Tufts University and creative writing at Northeastern University. She lives in Boston and Naples, Florida. 

Some Monday Readings

 

Critical Editorial Decisions – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life. 

 

Salvaging Our World – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

Albert Jay Nock: A Return to the Liberal Arts? – Bradley Birzer at The Imaginative Conservative.