The Gordian Knot

October 11, 2010
In Schlink's unremarkable stand-alone thriller, the fortunes of Georg Polger, a German living in France who's struggling to make ends meet as a translator, change after he receives an offer of steady employment translating technical manuals. The naïve Polger doesn't suspect anything untoward about the job, even after learning his employer has paid him to duplicate work already done. When he finds that his new lover, Françoise Kramsky, is covertly photographing confidential plans for a new military helicopter, Polger's search for the truth takes him to pre-9/11 New York City, where the plot goes somewhat off the rails. Schlink fails to make the transformation of his colorless, mild-mannered hero into an action figure convincing. Those looking for a more engaging protagonist will find one in the author's detective series featuring Gerald Self (Self's Murder, etc.).

September 15, 2010

Schlink is no stranger to crime fiction, having authored three novels about aging PI and former Nazi prosecutor Gerhard Self (Self's Murder). His latest exhibits many of the same preoccupations that surface in that trilogy. Georg is a freelance translator eking out a living in France. When his former boss dies suddenly, he buys the agency from his widow. Soon thereafter, he lands a lucrative translating contract for a high-level military project. To top it off, he's in love. Then one night he catches his lover photographing confidential documents he's translating. In no time, she has fled, and he's on the run. But who's chasing him? And why? As far back as 1997's The Reader, Schlink's fiction has been about the search for moral justification in a world of fatally compromised people. His latest, half-mystery and half-novel of ideas, isn't ultimately much different from his other books, though sometimes it's more confusing. Solid throughout the first four-fifths but contrived thereafter, it's still not a bad ride. VERDICT Should appeal to lovers of literary European crime fiction and readers of Schlink's fiction.--David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2010
Georg Polger is down and out in Provence. The translating assignments that pay his bills arent coming fast enough. When a new translation firm opens near his village, he finds work, money, and love with Francoise, the firms beautiful secretary. Soon, theyre living together, and Georgs life is perfect. But that changes when he discovers Francoise photographing diagrams of a revolutionary new helicopter that are part of his latest assignment. Francoise disappears, and Georg understands that hes been a pawn in an espionage operation. Impetuously, Georg travels to New York to find Francoise and try to understand what happened to his perfect life. Schlink, whose Holocaust novel The Reader (1997) was a best-seller, seems bent on defying genre categorization. Individual scenes in this novel might recall Kafka and Camus, but the primary focus is on quotidian events. Theres an espionage element, but naive, self-important Georg is the easiest of marks, and the erratic Francoise is hardly a practiced seductress. In the end, this offbeat, engaging novel is simply the moving story of two flawed people.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)