The backdrop of The Statement is worth a historical book alone. After Nazi Germany occupied France, many Frenchmen took a direct hand in the deportation of more than 80,000 Jews. Following the war, some -- Paul Touvier among them -- were convicted of treason, pardoned in the 1970s, and then rearrested and jailed. Brian Moore takes off from there with a thrilling fictional account of Pierre Brossard, who lives a shadowy life, flees from pursuers and confronts some of France's most vexing questions from an horrific time in its history.


From Publishers Weekly
While Moore's new novel can be called a thriller, it is in fact another of his stunning moral visions of modern life (Lies of Silence; The Colors of Blood) that have marked him as an astute, impassioned chronicler of 20th-century spiritual malaise. Here he has taken inspiration from a real situation, that of a former pro-Nazi Vichy military officer, Maurice Papon, who for four decades evaded punishment for his complicity in WWII crimes against Jews. Moore's antihero is called Pierre Brossard. He is introduced to us as an apparently nervous old man who travels only with a suitcase and a prayer. But he is soon revealed as a ruthless, twisted fascist whose piousness hides a vicious core of bigotry. Under the protection of an intricate web of aging Nazi collaborators and extreme conservatives entrenched in the Catholic Church, he has eluded capture for 44 years. We follow him as a secret terrorist organization attempts to exact final vengeance for his wartime crimes and discover that not one ounce of contrition shadows his mind. A wily and murderous veteran of the game, Brossard eliminates his would-be assassins and re-exposes his case to the world, with shocking results. The chase is riveting, and Moore's exploration of the chilling self-righteousness behind Brossard's reasoning is provocative and disturbing, showing how hatred can spew its own, distorted rationality. In the end, Moore extrapolates from real life a masterful puzzle of spiritual and historical dimensions. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Moore's 18th novel (following No Other Life, LJ 8/93) is the story of Pierre Broussard, a 70-year-old Vichy collaborator now wanted for crimes against humanity. After 40 years of hiding in various French monasteries, Broussard suddenly finds himself chased by both the gendarmerie and assassins. Moore sketches his characters too lightly for the reader to care about them and telegraphs the ending in the first 90 pages, giving the reader little reason to continue. Ultimately, Moore asks for too much suspension of disbelief. Who, for instance, might benefit from the assassination of a 70-year-old Vichy collaborator? Recommended for large popular collections only.?Katherine Holmes, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
... a clever thriller.... What certainly can be revealed is that the ending of The Statement is a surprising shock. And that the waves of that shock wash over all the complex moral nuances of the story and leave in their paths the sense that history as an instrument of justice is at best extremely crude.


From AudioFile
There are few genres more perfectly suited to audio than the short thriller, and Andrew Sachs's reading of THE STATEMENT is a marvelous example. Brian Moore's novel (based on a true story and recently made into a film starring Michael Caine) follows the flight of Pierre Brossard, a Nazi collaborator wanted for murdering Jews in occupied France. Now 70, an unrepentant Brossard is being hunted by the GENDARMARIE and by a vigilante group that wants him dead. The tightly written text is handled brilliantly by Sachs, who makes the most of the novel's tension with his pacing and subtle characterizations, especially that of the quietly sinister Brossard. D.B. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Moore's engrossing new novel dramatizes the narrow escapes and glaring self-deceptions of a 70-year-old Catholic Frenchman, Pierre Brossard, who is being newly pursued for his participation, while a member of the Vichy-affiliated Milici during World War II, in the execution of Jews. Brossard was officially pardoned in 1971 by the French president, but soon afterwards he was condemned internationally for "crimes against humanity." He has remained a fugitive ever since, receiving asylum at various sympathetic Catholic monasteries and abbeys in France. Moore adeptly weaves an increasingly taut plot centered on how and why the government and a group of assassins are suddenly pursuing Brossard, pointedly exposing a fundamental contradiction in Brossard's character: between an ever-more-urgent desire to appear repentant in God's eyes for his crimes and a persistent self-justification for those crimes. Members of the Catholic clergy and the French government who have been giving Brossard money and refuge are afflicted by analogous failures of self-recognition; their involvement in the novel's climax gives this story a cautionary edge. Jim O'Laughlin


From Kirkus Reviews
A superlative political novel that, like its immediate predecessors, Lies of Silence (1990) and No Other Life (1993), blends the visceral appeal of a beautifully plotted thriller with the more complex pleasures of a thoughtful exploration of conflicting and long-lingering moral quandaries. ``The statement'' is an explanatory declaration that is to be pinned to the body of 70-year-old Pierre Brossard, a former officer in the ``Milice'' that carried out the Vichy government's WW II policy of collaboration with the Nazis, and a known murderer of Jews. This will be done, that is, if Brossard is found first by the underground Jewish group that seeks his death ``because they believe he will never be brought to trial,'' rather than by the officials in the French government who want him captured alive. But Brossard has survived for 40 years on the run, given sanctuary and tacit approval by his country's Catholic Church, and perhaps supported by highly placed collaborators like himself who could no longer be protected should his crimes come to public attention. This brilliant premise is developed with breathtaking skill, as Moore--who has few peers as a lucid explicator of convoluted narrative materials--adroitly shifts his focus among the harried Brossard (as certain of God's forgiveness as he is of his undimmed, murderous anti-Semitism), his various pursuers, and the several clerics, high and low, who have persuaded themselves that ``the Church's law of asylum supersedes . . . the laws of the civil authority.'' The novel's characterizations are deftly etched, its issues are treated with complete fairness, and the suspense is maintained until the last possible moment, when a stunning surprise confronts us on the final page. Moore here engages Graham Greene and John le Carr‚ on their own ground, producing a haunting, heartpounding literary thriller of which either would be proud. They don't write them any better than this. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"Masterful... In some ways it is more frightening than a Stephen King novel, because the monsters are not other-worldly... This book goes straight to the bone, punching a hole in the fleshy armor of old politicians and misguided priests and our sentimental faith in justice." -- Vancouver Sun

"Dazzling...Irresistable from the first page." -- The Globe and Mail

"A classic page-turner, fast-paced, riveting, full of terror, tension and a fine play of ideas." -- London Free Press

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The sun-drenched landscape of the south of France is the setting of this chilling tale of crime, pursuit, and punishment. Here, almost fifty years before, Pierre Brossard, empowered by the World War II Vichy government, massacred fourteen Jews in the town of Dombey. Since the Allied victory he has been a man on the run, condemned in absentia to death, but protected by friends in the highest offices of the French government and the Church. He has become an artist of escape, moving like a fox through the underground maze of monasteries and safe houses, able to turn the tables on those who would deliver a death sentence on him, and to secure fresh sanctuary from those whose ties with him remain as strong and sacred as they are secret. Now, however, time is running out. The chess match against capture that Pierre Brossard has played so skillfully and so long has reached its endgame. His friends are aging, and their fervor is fading. New forces in the government and the Church are unearthing buried war guilts and demanding a reckoning. And even as those who once saved Brossard prepare to set him up as a sacrifice, a vigilante organization of Holocaust avengers sends out their dedicated assassins to take for themselves what French justice has failed to deliver. What Brian Moore has achieved is an extraordinary superimposition of terror and violence upon the picture-postcard image of the cities and towns, abbeys and churches of French Provence and the Riviera, as he tightens the screws of suspense shock by shock. In Brossard, he has succeeded in giving abysmal evil an indelibly human face. And in the figures of both Brossard's protectors and pursuers, he illumines the double-faced nature of loyalty and vengeance, and the no-man's-land that lies between murder and execution.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

While Moore's new novel can be called a thriller, it is in fact another of his stunning moral visions of modern life (Lies of Silence; The Colors of Blood) that have marked him as an astute, impassioned chronicler of 20th-century spiritual malaise. Here he has taken inspiration from a real situation, that of a former pro-Nazi Vichy military officer, Maurice Papon, who for four decades evaded punishment for his complicity in WWII crimes against Jews. Moore's antihero is called Pierre Brossard. He is introduced to us as an apparently nervous old man who travels only with a suitcase and a prayer. But he is soon revealed as a ruthless, twisted fascist whose piousness hides a vicious core of bigotry. Under the protection of an intricate web of aging Nazi collaborators and extreme conservatives entrenched in the Catholic Church, he has eluded capture for 44 years. We follow him as a secret terrorist organization attempts to exact final vengeance for his wartime crimes and discover that not one ounce of contrition shadows his mind. A wily and murderous veteran of the game, Brossard eliminates his would-be assassins and re-exposes his case to the world, with shocking results. The chase is riveting, and Moore's exploration of the chilling self-righteousness behind Brossard's reasoning is provocative and disturbing, showing how hatred can spew its own, distorted rationality. In the end, Moore extrapolates from real life a masterful puzzle of spiritual and historical dimensions. (June)

Library Journal

Moore's 18th novel (following No Other Life, LJ 8/93) is the story of Pierre Broussard, a 70-year-old Vichy collaborator now wanted for crimes against humanity. After 40 years of hiding in various French monasteries, Broussard suddenly finds himself chased by both the gendarmerie and assassins. Moore sketches his characters too lightly for the reader to care about them and telegraphs the ending in the first 90 pages, giving the reader little reason to continue. Ultimately, Moore asks for too much suspension of disbelief. Who, for instance, might benefit from the assassination of a 70-year-old Vichy collaborator? Recommended for large popular collections only.-Katherine Holmes, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.

AudioFile - Yuri Rasovsky

What should one call the cassette version of a page-turner? A side-spinner? Anyway, The Statement qualifies for the appropriate title. It's a satirical thriller about an aged Nazi, alternately threatened and protected by various interests because of his Holocaust depredations. British actor Andrew Sachs, more at home with farce than suspense, gives faint value to the author's expert orchestration of tension and sometimes even misreads a line. Nonetheless, Moore's vitality and craftsmanship carry the day, giving the listener a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Y.R. cAudioFile, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

A superlative political novel that, like its immediate predecessors, Lies of Silence (1990) and No Other Life (1993), blends the visceral appeal of a beautifully plotted thriller with the more complex pleasures of a thoughtful exploration of conflicting and long-lingering moral quandaries.

"The statement" is an explanatory declaration that is to be pinned to the body of 70-year-old Pierre Brossard, a former officer in the "Milice" that carried out the Vichy government's WW II policy of collaboration with the Nazis, and a known murderer of Jews. This will be done, that is, if Brossard is found first by the underground Jewish group that seeks his death "because they believe he will never be brought to trial," rather than by the officials in the French government who want him captured alive. But Brossard has survived for 40 years on the run, given sanctuary and tacit approval by his country's Catholic Church, and perhaps supported by highly placed collaborators like himself who could no longer be protected should his crimes come to public attention. This brilliant premise is developed with breathtaking skill, as Moore—who has few peers as a lucid explicator of convoluted narrative materials—adroitly shifts his focus among the harried Brossard (as certain of God's forgiveness as he is of his undimmed, murderous anti-Semitism), his various pursuers, and the several clerics, high and low, who have persuaded themselves that "the Church's law of asylum supersedes . . . the laws of the civil authority." The novel's characterizations are deftly etched, its issues are treated with complete fairness, and the suspense is maintained until the last possible moment, when a stunning surprise confronts us on the final page.

Moore here engages Graham Greene and John le Carré on their own ground, producing a haunting, heartpounding literary thriller of which either would be proud. They don't write them any better than this.