Joseph Kanon

Alibi

Product Description: 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.
(© Henry Holt and Co.)

Synopsis: Adam Miller had had a long war, and when the US Army let him go he made his way to Venice where his mother was trying to recreate her pre-war life. Exhausted both in body and spirit the pace of the ancient city began to heal him, and when he met Claudia, an Italian Jewess, he was ripe for seduction. Claudia's war had been worse, and after Mussolini's downfall she was quickly betrayed to the SS. While she survived her father didn't and to her horror she discovers that the man who was responsible for them being sent to the camp is about to become her new lover's step-father. In a violent confrontation Adam and Claudia are left needing to create an unbreakable alibi, which they do, but to uphold it Adam must establish what really happened to these people and in doing so exposes the ambiguity of morality in peace and in war, and has to grapple with the questions of what is good or evil, what is right or wrong, and does truth really matter?
(© Little Brown)