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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
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Summary
Summary
From the bestselling author of" Los Alamos" and "The Good German" comes a riveting tale of love, revenge and murder set in postwar Venice
It is 1946, and a stunned Europe is beginning its slow recovery from the ravages of World War II. Adam Miller has come to Venice to visit his widowed mother and try to forget the horrors he has witnessed as a U.S. Army war crimes investigator in Germany. Nothing has changed in Venice-not the beautiful palazzi, not the violins at Florian's, not the shifting water that makes the city, untouched by bombs, still seem a dream.
But when Adam falls in love with Claudia, a Jewish woman scarred by her devastating experiences during the war, he is forced to confront another Venice, a city still at war with itself, haunted by atrocities it would rather forget. Everyone, he discovers, has been compromised by the Occupation-the international set drinking at Harry's, the police who kept order for the Germans, and most of all Gianni Maglione, the suave and enigmatic Venetian who happens to be his mother's new suitor. And when, finally, the troubled past erupts in violent murder, Adam finds himself at the center of a web of deception, intrigue, and unexpected moral dilemmas. When is murder acceptable? What are the limits of guilt? How much is someone willing to pay for a perfect alibi?
Using the piazzas and canals of Venice as an enthralling but sinister backdrop, Joseph Kanon has again written a gripping historical thriller. "Alibi" is at once a murder mystery, a love story, and a superbly crafted novel about the nature of moral responsibility.
Author Notes
Joseph Kanon began his career in publishing while an undergraduate at Harvard, reading manuscripts for The Atlantic Monthly. Kanon traveled to England for graduate school, then returned to the United States to work as a book review editor and writer for the Saturday Review. Rising through the ranks of the publishing world, he eventually became president and CEO of E.P. Dutton, and then executive vice president of Houghton Mifflin's Trade and Reference Division.
Kanon is the author of Los Alamos (1997), an authentic fictional recreation of the waning days of World War II during which the murder of one of the Manhattan Project's security officers occurs. The Prodigal Spy was published in late 1998.
His novel, Leaving Berlin, is a 2015 New York Times bestseller.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
It's late 1945 at the start of this atmospheric historical thriller, and G.I. Adam Miller, officially assigned to ferret out Nazi war criminals in Germany, joins his widowed mother, Grace, who has recently arrived in Venice from New York to resume her life as a wealthy American expatriate. Together, they flow into the social eddies of the upper class, determined to pick up where they left off in 1939. Grace has met an old flame, Gianni Maglione, a distinguished doctor whom Adam suspects of gold-digging. Meanwhile, Adam himself meets Jewish Claudia Grassini, who survived the Nazi pogroms by becoming the mistress of a powerful Italian Fascist. The novel's languid pace picks up when Claudia meets Maglione, whom she accuses not only of being a Nazi collaborator but also of having condemned her own father to Auschwitz. Further complications arise with the appearance of Rosa, an Italian operative and former partisan. Kanon (The Good German, etc.) keeps his complex plot involving murder, elaborate alibis, false accusations and a web of secrets spinning back to the war on track, although the various entanglements aren't always neatly unraveled. Adam and Claudia's love affair provides the requisite romance, but there's no sense that they find much to like in one another. More interesting is Kanon's portrait of a pathetic and hopelessly naOve group of wealthy people out of touch with the postwar world's reality. Agent, Amanda Urban. Author tour. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Adam hopes that in Venice he'll leave behind the horrors of World War II, but falling for the Jewish Claudia makes him confront the complicity of those around him. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
From Alibi :The whole room gleamed with gold, dimming now, people hushing, the orchestra starting. Something moved over my finger and I jumped-Claudia's hand, reaching over just to touch. She didn't turn her head and I saw that her eyes were shiny, her whole attention given over to the music. Now I heard it too. Rodolfo's love song, so beautiful that it seemed no one could have written it, just found it, floating somewhere above the ordinary world. If this was possible, anything was. I looked down at her hand. We could be happy. Why shouldn't it work? Gianni was gone and we had an alibi. The Germans had gotten away with murder, the whole world. Even in Venice, as beautiful as the music, everyone had an alibi, somewhere else when the air raid sirens covered the sounds of people being dragged off. I didn't know. I didn't realize. I had my own life to consider. And, of course, everyone did. Excerpted from Alibi by Joseph Kanon All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.