Customer Reviews

Turncoat

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very original story about a couple living around the time of the Kennedy assassination. One day, an older man (the wife's long-thought-dead father) arrives with a roll of film. From here the entire mystery begins. He gets murdered and the wife disappears. The husband goes on to Europe to try and find her. Full of dark Nazi, french-political history, thisis another very good mystery novel from Elkins. Good job.

Turncoat is a thriller for those who want a little something more in the writing department. Elkins as an author brings a flair for literature along with him as he crafts a nice taught little story here with 'Turncoat'.

This story is not exactly like most of what you will find in the mystery/thriller genre. Elkins maturity pulls this story above the fray of Patterson's and Stuart Woods. The story almost starts off with a very English style. Elkins invests a lot of time into developing the character, Pete Simone. The story does not move quickly until it starts to resolve its many open plot threads towards the end.

Some things I liked about this story was its unique setting during the days of Kennedy's assassination, even though it merrits only a few short lines. Elkins does not really provide much of a feel for New York or Europe as individual settings, but he does do a great job of describing a character from this time period. I think of some of Ludlum's books which I have enjoyed in the past. As an author, Ludlum likes to start the action roller coaster on page one. This does not happen here. Instead, Elkins very slow style builds on itself page by page. The problem is that you might not last to the point where it starts to pay off. I remember getting pretty frustrated about half way through, the story at that point really was not very satisfying.

Some of what I did not like... The ending... I wont give anything away, its just that with the maturity of Elkin's writing, I would have expected a little more from the guy. Once the resolutions start to occur, everything is so pat and falls so nicely into place. Pete Simone does not really have to do very much to reach an ending. Over and over again, a nightmare that re-occurs crops up in this story, I was left sort of wondering why Elkins bothered to add it, since it was sort of a silly add on by the time you are let into its meaning. The periphreal characters are even talked about at the end by Pete, and how everything started to occur and this just highlights the meaninglessness of the entire story. Id go into more detail here, but that would be giving everything away.

This is not a great book, and I would not reccomend it to anyone. However, Elkins does manage to write so well, that I will happily hunt down other books by this author with the hope that they give a little more bang for the buck, and live up to the authors potential.

What is it that drives Elkins to write suspense stories about Americans getting caught up in European intrigue? He's demonstrated a fine ability to write technical murder mysteries (Gideon Oliver, Chris Norgren, the golf mysteries with his wife Charlotte), but he seems to want to write spy novels instead. And unfortunately, he's not quite as good at them.

The first Gideon Oliver book was a spy novel set in Europe. So was the first book in the Chris Norgren series. And so was Loot. Now we have this one.

It was OK, but not great. I was able to set it down halfway and only finish reading it a week later. I can't do that with Helen MacInnes novels that I have already read ten times!

The story is pretty typical of spy novels -- an innocent man gets caught up in intrigue, his wife disappears, he searches for her, etc. The most interesting twist is the things he learns about his wife during the process. But it's not interesting enough.

Please Aaron, write another mystery....

Suspense takes a turn for the more sinister when a tale is set in foreign locales. Edgar Award winner Aaron Elkins knows this well and utilizes it to perfection in his thriller "Turncoat." Following on the heels of his acclaimed "Loot" and "Skeleton Dance," we knew it would be a riveting read. We weren't disappointed.

Opening lines set the scene and pique interest: "For everybody else in America it was the day JFK was killed in Dallas. For me, it would always be the day Lily's father turned up on our doorstep.

But first things first...."

Among the first things is an introduction to Pete Simon, a man who has everything he could want. Twenty years married he is still very much in love with his wife, Lily; he enjoys his profession; their home is warm and inviting. Pete's plate is full until it is overturned by the appearance of a stranger at their door.

The interloper appears to be mad, raving about money, death, forgiveness. Pete has never seen him before; Lily has. The stranger is her father, a man she said had died some years ago in France. On the following day the man's body is discovered. He is now truly dead, brutally beaten and abandoned.

Worst of all, Lily vanishes leaving only a note imploring Pete to let her go, not to follow her. Where she could have gone or why she left is a mystery to her anguished husband. He has but one clue: the business card of a Barcelona antiques dealer. Of course, Pete goes in search of his wife little knowing the dangers he will face.

Once in Europe he finds himself among those who cannot forget the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis. As the path to Lily's whereabouts seems to be getting warm Pete is also met with dreadful secrets, long hidden secrets of collaboration with a vicious enemy. Would those who cannot forget seek to revenge themselves with Pete?

Elkins's portrait of good and evil is stunning in every way. "Turncoat" is a taut thriller, and startling reminder of how the present is affected by the past.

- Gail Cooke

Aaron Elkins once again mines the subject of the Holocaust in his new suspense novel, "Turncoat." The year is 1963. Pete Simon, an associate professor of history at Brooklyn College, has been blissfully married to his French wife, Lily, for seventeen years. Pete thinks that he knows his wife well, but he soon discovers that Lily is keeping some shocking secrets about her past. Lily's father, Marcel Vercier, whom she claimed had died many years ago, turns up one day on her doorstep, very much alive. Shortly thereafter, Monsieur Vercier is murdered and Lily disappears.

It turns out that both Lily and her father have much to hide about their activities during the Nazi occupation of France. Pete spends much of the book traveling to Spain and France in order to unearth the truth about what Lily and Vercier really did during the war years. Pete endangers his life as he tangles with a corrupt businessman, former members of the French Resistance, a French Inspector and even some Corsican bandits. Pete learns that the Nazi occupation was a moral litmus test that proved very challenging to the natives of France living under this oppressive regime. He also discovers that the fallout from those horrible years still has major repercussions even after all this time.

The writing in "Turncoat" is somewhat simplistic. The protagonist, Pete, is an underwritten character, whose blind love and faith in Lily is unrealistic given the lies that she has fed her husband throughout their marriage. The tone of the book is seriocomic; the many humorous passages in this book seem designed to provide comic relief as a counterpoint to the serious nature of Pete's discoveries. However, this mixture of comedy and tragedy is occasionally jarring. In addition, the denouement of the book is too pat and contrived. Given the importance of the moral issues that Elkins raises in this book, he should have made his plot more coherent and realistic, instead of settling for a superficial treatment of a very serious subject.

I've read everything by this author and enjoyed every book....except this one. Perhaps it was because I have developed such expectations based on his past works. There were too many segments where things just dragged on and situations that just repeated themselves. Lily and Pete were too shallow and neurotic for my tastes, although somewhat improving by the book's end. The ending was a nice twist but not enough to push the overall rating of this book higher. I've certainly missed Charlotte's works lately and hope she will have something new coming out soon.

Peter and Lily Simon have been happily married for seventeen years. Although both were born in France, they met in England where he served during World War II as an army air officer and she worked at the nearby Free French headquarters. They have been living the American dream for years but it becomes a nightmare in 1963 when Lily's father knocks on the door.

Lily told Pete when they first met that her father died at the hands of the Germans. When Lily closes the door on her father without giving him a chance to speak to her, Pete demands explanations that Lily refuses to give. When her father is murdered, Lily disappears and Pete travels to Barcelona then to Veaudry, France where he learns what Lily has spent so many years trying to hide. After almost getting killed, Pete is finally able to find his wife only to have her kidnapped by professionals for hire.

TURNCOAT is a fascinating thriller but it is also a family drama about a woman tortured by her past and the man who loves her so much that he wants to break the chain that bind her to a world that no longer exists except in memory. Aaron Elkins is a gifted storyteller and readers will come away from his latest endeavor wanting to read his previous works.

Harriet Klausner

This well-written thriller brings the wartime past of several characters into the world of 1963. When the protagonist's father-in-law shows up at his door, a man that his wife told him died 20 years before, it is the beginning of a roller coaster ride of a plot that takes him from the New York area into Spain, France and elsewhere. The trip is necessary because the man's wife disappears shortly after her father's unexpected appearance, leaving him a note asking him not to follow or try to find her.

Despite this admonition, our hero goes about looking for his wife and, in the process, uncovers secrets from the war that many people would wish to keep hidden, even going to far as to commit murder to keep them unknown. The characters are well drawn and the action lively. The plot is fairly straightforward and the prose readable. If you want a book for diversion, with a good plot and lots of action, this one is for you.

The novel has been amply described in the Amazon reviews so I will concentrate on the audio edition which is how I accessed the book. Christopher Lane is a fine performer as witnessed by his handling of various characters. Different characters are differentiated by voice acting with professionalism. His voicing of the lead character is also done quite well. The script ( the book by Elkins) is a good one, involving characters with whom we can identify and others who represent evil in varying degrees. His handling of the moral issues is quite good as is his handling of the "set pieces" of confrontation. However, this is a novel which takes a good bit of time to read; most of it takes the stream of consciousness form, the thoughts of the protagonist, his description of events, his moral deliberations. Sometimes the period between voice changes is pretty long. Sometimes this reader grew a little impatient with the sound of the single voice. Nonetheless, I found the whole quite a worthwhile read, entertaining, in parts-suspenseful, and posing a moral dilemma worth thinking about.
I can recommend it to most general readers and mystery-suspense listeners, with the proviso that one follow the normal procedure of breaking the whole into palatable time segments.

This was my first read of an Elkin's novel. Though the first 50 pages were slow to get going, after that the novel was a hoot. In addition to being a good read, I also learnt about the WW II french resistance - something that I would not normally be interested in at all (i.e. I am not a WW II or any type of history buff). I would recommend this book to friends, and think that I will track down some more books by Elkin.