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THE FINAL RECKONING
by Sam Bourne
Harper , December 2010
$26.99
ISBN: 0061875740


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Many of the characters we meet in THE FINAL RECKONING by Sam Bourne are not what they at first appear to be. A suspected terrorist is shot in front of the United Nations. Upon closer examination, he appears to be a harmless old man, Gerald Merton, visiting from England--a Holocaust survivor no less. Is this a terrible accident--or is Merton really a serial killer? Tom Byrne, a mafia lawyer who used to work for the UN, is sent to England to make amends to Merton's daughter—but is Tom a cynical mob lawyer or a demoralized humanitarian? The daughter, Rebecca, is a doctor, but what else might she be? Someone very high up in the power structure of the UN is involved with trying to keep a secret that Tom and Rebecca are well on their way to discovering. But when we eventually find out who this person is, it turns out that he is not the one we are really looking for. And even the author is writing under an assumed name.

Tom Byrne falls hard for the beautiful Rebecca, but death and destruction follow them through the suburbs of London. Her house and her dead father's house are both ransacked, their conversations are compromised, and a person who seems to have important information for them is found dead. They are even suspects in this death, which might or might not be another murder. Are the people who are following them looking for the little black diary that Tom found, which recounts the tragic life story and the resistance work of Gerald Merton (originally Gershon Matzkin) as a young man? Or is there more to the story than Tom has read in this book? Eventually Tom and Rebecca are drugged and-- well, let's not give it all away.

We are now at a point in time where the Holocaust is more than a half-century in the past, and most of the people who either perpetrated the atrocities or were survivors are aged or dead. However, any story that is able to personalize or add to the information that we have about this period can be gripping. This is especially true if a character's life was impacted by this time in history. Bourne is a journalist writing under a pseudonym to tell a fictionalized version of a real life adventure. In the Author's Note, he explains that the book is based on a true story of a group of Jews who took it upon themselves to avenge the horrors of the Holocaust. Bourne creates a murder mystery that involves detectives on two continents and a powerful but hidden person pulling the strings. Is this person an ex-Nazi? The answer to this question is revealed in a suspenseful and surprising ending. Although some of what happens in this book seems familiar and predictable—the good guys, who may or may not be so good, being chased by dark forces but having sex along the way, an unseen but powerful person orchestrating events—the way the past and the present are interwoven and the way the mystery is untangled make this a compelling read.

Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Reviewed by Anne Corey, February 2011

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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