Second Violin (Inspector Troy #6)
by John Lawton
3.95 of 5 stars
3.95 · rating details · 353 ratings · 62 reviews
1940. London is under siege by German bombers - and its own prejudices and paranoias. The last thing Troy wanted was to be seconded to Special Branch to round up 'enemy' aliens.
Interesting characters in interesting times - London as World War II starts. Among them: Jews who barely escaped the Nazis, Jews who have been in London their whole lives, Murder Squad cop who's from the upper class who is assigned to round up undocumented aliens (wasn't just the US), his older brother among the detainees (wasn't born in England) and the Russian emigre, now millionaire and newspaper publisher. Among the plots: 5 rabbis have died/been killed. Is it murder and if so, who and why?
What stands out here is the picture of Germany pre-war as the Blackshirts take over. It's not new, but it's chilling none-the-less. And the Jews who manage to escape - none of them are necessarily brave or strong, but determined to survive.
This is the second in a series featuring the upper-class cop and his family. In the novels, the author has placed his characters in very interesting times (post-war, the Profumo scandal, the Cold War, to name a few).
ohn Lawton is a producer/director in television who has spent much of his time interpreting the USA to the English, and occasionally vice versa. He has worked with Gore Vidal, Neil Simon, Scott Turow, Noam Chomsky, Fay Weldon, Harold Pinter and Kathy Acker. He thinks he may well be the only TV director ever to be named in a Parliamentary Bill in the British House of Lords as an offender against taste and balance. He has also been denounced from the pulpit in Mississippi as a `Communist,’ but thinks that less remarkable.
He spent most of the 90s in New York – among other things attending the writers’ sessions at The Actors’ Studio under Norman Mailer – and has visited or worked in more than half the 50 states. Since 2000 he has lived in the high, wet hills ofDerbyshire England, with frequent excursions into the high, dry hills of Arizona and Italy.
