The Resistance

June 25, 2012
Steiner’s suspenseful fourth thriller featuring former CIA spy and State Department operative Louis Morgon (after 2010’s The Terrorist) provides new details on how Morgon came to settle in rural France after Nixon’s secretary of state canned him in 1974. During renovations of his new home in Saint Léon, Morgon finds some faded documents and a brace of pistols concealed in a crawl space. These items prove to be connected with the French resistance against the Nazi occupation. He brings the materials to the local police officer, Jean Renard, whose father had a similar post under the Vichy regime. Flashbacks to WWII recount the struggles of ordinary Frenchmen to survive without surrendering their souls. A mystery concerning a possible traitor in the ranks of the resistance carries over into Morgon’s present. Steiner brings the period to life in a compelling manner, even if his lead is in the background for most of the book. Agent: Jennifer Lyons, Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency.

August 1, 2012
Three decades after it began, an unlikely investigator examines the way the Nazi occupation of France turned neighbor against neighbor and led to murder. In the early 1970s, Louis Morgon is sacked from the CIA without warning. His wife, Sarah, denounces him and moves out with the children. Louis tries teaching and writing and working in the garden but all diffidently. One day, someone suggests France, and Louis settles into the charming village of Saint Leon-sur-Deme. He buys a house and sets about cleaning and repairing it, becoming an object of friendly curiosity. Curiosity turns to concern when Louis finds in a crawl space a collection of handbills and several small pistols wrapped in a cloth, all of which he brings to town. At that point, the story flashes back to 1940 and the beginning of the German occupation. Rifleman Onesime Josquin catches a wagon to the Hotel de France, where locals gather to strategize and argue. Superficial cooperation with the occupiers is a given, but even this becomes challenging when the German officer in charge, Col. Buchner, demands that local officials keep order...or else. Particularly contentious is the wrangling of the schoolmaster, Bertrand, and the young policeman, Renard, whom Buchner seems to have taken under his wing. Onesime is riding his bicycle home one evening when he sees a body on the side of the road. It's a German soldier, shot in the back of the head. The murder is covered up and remains unsolved until the involvement, 30 years later, of the astute and persuasive Louis Morgon. Morgon's fourth appearance (The Terrorist, 2010, etc.) is a subtle and complex thriller/whodunit, written with wit, intelligence and luminous precision.

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Starred review from July 1, 2012
Little more than two decades passed between the staggering carnage of WWI and the Nazi occupation of France in WWII. The French who survived the Great War were still mourning the loss of an entire generation when the new horror began. Every French citizen was forced to personally confront profound moral dilemmas. Resist the Nazis, become Maquis? Even if many Maquis leaders were Communists? Go about your business and hope for the best? Join the milice (militia) and fight the Maquis? Steiner's latest Louis Morgon thriller, following The Terrorist (2010), begins in 1975 with Louis' arrival in St. Leon-sur-Deme. He finds an almost illegible Resistance tract and soon discovers that 30 years haven't lessened the enmities and pain of the occupation. The book's largest segment portrays the war years through the actions of a handful of St. Leon residents. It is brilliant, evocative, elegiac, and suffused with sadness. The book's beginning eloquently fleshes out how and why Louis finds himself there. The final section has Louis' friend Renard, the village's sole gendarme, attempting to investigate a possible massacre that occurred late in the war. It is somewhat less satisfying than the beginning or the war years, but The Resistance is still a powerful and beautiful reminder of Faulkner's dictum that the only thing truly worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)