The Accomplice

June 1, 2019

Nearly two decades after Max Weill saw his family marched to the gas chambers of Auschwitz--and after the war's-end escape of Dr. Otto Schramm, who assisted the infamous Josef Mengele--Max asks nephew Aaron Wiley, a CIA desk analyst, to hunt down Schramm. Aaron heads to Argentina, where he gets help from an Israeli agent, a German newspaper reporter, and the CIA station chief while wending his way into the good graces of Schramm's lovely, troubled daughter. The Edgar Award-winning Kanon again presents profound moral quandary; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

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September 1, 2019
In 1962, the year of Adolf Eichmann's execution, CIA analyst Aaron Wiley, nephew of famed Nazi hunter Max Weill, tracks notorious concentration camp torturer Otto Schramm to Argentina--where Aaron becomes involved with Schramm's daughter. Max, a Holocaust survivor who was on the cover of Time magazine with his "old rival" Simon Wiesenthal, refuses to believe official accounts that Schramm is dead. Maybe another evil Nazi, but not the one with whom he once studied medicine and the one who conducted hideous experiments on children at Auschwitz. Not the Mengele associate who chatted with Max at the camp knowing Max's son was being led into the gas chamber. The Nazi hunter's skepticism is borne out when, joined by Aaron at an outdoor cafe in Hamburg, he spots Schramm, whom he recognizes from the way he walks. Max's failing health doesn't allow him to pursue Schramm, aka Helmut Braun, after his prey slips away. Reluctantly, Aaron takes his uncle's place. It doesn't take him long to get introduced to the daughter, Hanna, in Buenos Aires. Quickly attracted to her, he finds himself in the untenable position of secretly tailing her when not enjoying her considerable charms. Fueled by brilliant scenes of dialogue between Aaron and Hanna, who, at considerable psychological cost, has come to accept her father's evil past, Kanon's latest sophisticated thriller is teeming with suspense. Surrounded by aggressively anti-Semitic acquaintances of Hanna's who are hoping for a Fourth Reich and working with British and Israeli operatives with conflicting agendas, Aaron is an endangered odd man out. As fast as the pages turn, though, the novel stumbles with less-than-convincing character developments and plot turns. While elements of the Casablanca formula work well at first, ultimately they don't. A fast-paced, atmospheric thriller that works less well in reflecting on the banality of evil.

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September 16, 2019
Edgar-winner Kanon (Defectors) goes through the motions in this uninspired historical thriller. In 1962 Hamburg, Germany, Max Weill, who has dedicated his life since the Holocaust to getting justice for its victims, is hoping to convince his nephew Aaron Wiley, an intelligence analyst for the CIA, to carry on the family tradition. Max’s efforts are unsuccessful until he’s convinced that he spots Otto Schramm, a doctor who partnered with Josef Mengele and was believed to have died in a car accident. Aaron is skeptical, until he stakes out the funeral of Schramm’s wife in a cemetery near the Hamburg airport, along with a reporter friend, Fritz Gruber, and spots the doctor in attendance, complete with a hulking bodyguard who destroys Gruber’s camera and film. Schramm escapes to Buenos Aires, followed by Aaron, who gets close to the Nazi’s attractive daughter by pretending to be conducting a research project on the children of the architects of the Holocaust. Readers looking for a nuanced look at the impact of the sins of the parents will be disappointed. This is a low suspense outing from a writer capable of much better. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM Partners.

September 15, 2019
It's 1962, but WWII is still fresh in the minds of many, especially Max Weill, an Auschwitz survivor who has devoted the last 17 years to tracking Nazi war criminals, in particular the elusive Dr. Otto Schramm, who worked as a camp doctor with Joseph Mengele. Near death himself, Max sees Schramm on the streets of Hamburg and elicits the aid of his nephew Aaron, a CIA agent, to finally bring the man to justice. Aaron wants no part of his uncle's crusade, but after Max's death, familial obligation drives him to Argentina, where Schramm's daughter, Hana, is living. So begins a complex psychological thriller that evokes Hitchcock's Notorious in the love affair that develops between Aaron and Hana. The hunt for former Nazis living luxurious lives in Argentina has formed the core of numerous thrillers, but, typically, the chase and capture are drawn in strictly black-and-white terms. Here Kanon injects humanity into each of his characters, even Schramm, and the hunters are all wounded in various degrees, the burden of the past obscuring their ability to see the future. Another fine historical thriller from the always-reliable Kanon.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)