Alibi

Intriguing story linking the past with the present. Characters were believable and with the story set in the magnificent setting of Venice.

Where some authors establish the foundations of a series by character, environment, period, and then construct fresh plots around them, Joseph Kanon has the remarkable skill to make each novel new and unique. Los Alamos takes the reader to New Mexico, scene of the Manhattan Project. The Prodigal Spy is espionage in McCarthyite America and Iron Curtain Prague. The Good German recreates occupied Berlin at the end of World War II. Alibi also reaches back to 1946 and the ambiguity and unease of the immediate post-war period - but now we are in Venice. This is tangible, almost visible Venice, city of beautiful facades and dark byways. Grace Miller, an American widow, is revisiting memories of a happier Venetian stay, Harry's Bar, the Gritti Palace, cocktails and parties in the thirties, dancing to Cole Porter tunes. Many of her old cronies remain; they introduce her to Doctor Maglione a wealthy widower. A marriage is in prospect. The idyll is disrupted by the arrival of Grace's son, Adam, recently released from his role as an army investigator in de-Nazifying Germany. Adam meets, and falls in love with, a Jewish girl, Claudia. Soon the prospects of well-adjusted happiness are disrupted. Doctor Maglione may not be all he appears. Bertie, the urbane lotus-eating Irishman, disseminates gossip but seeks to allay concern. The policeman, Inspector Cavallini, is relaxed but has a murder to investigate. Where in all this are Adam and Claudia placed? Centrally, it transpires. Joseph Kanon peels away layer after layer of a dark and troubling tale that doesn't quite end with the final page.

Post war Venice; guilt and shame run though the Dramatis personae and their society like the canals run through the city: swirling, shallow here, deep there, polluted and corrupt and all pervasive. The story sets itself up quite well until, part way through, there is a murder. We know from this point who did the killing. From thereon the guilty alternate between covering for themselves and fretting when an innocent person becomes a strong suspect. The book by now is in free fall so far as plausibility is concerned. The murderers try to exonerate the accused risking their own exposure, and involving the poor reader in a convoluted and tangled narrative. On and implausibly on they go, flailing about alternately covering for themselves with trying to exonerate the police's innocent suspect. The innocent accused has a history snaking back into Venice's wartime fascist, not so distant past, linking him to the guilty pair's murder victim, but it was so tenuously introduced I couldn't understand or follow it; my fault or the author's? Either way, the rest of the story lost its point and thread, becoming a cop drama until, at the end, after a well written chase, the whole thing breaks apart with various people acting incongruously and turning out to be not what we thought. It seemed a gratuitous twist to me. The author writes quite well, and the individuals can even be distinguished by their dialogue. They don't all talk the same. The city's atmosphere and social life are well depicted. The story does race along despite the incoherence of the innocent suspect's wartime activities. It can be read as a post war adventure providing you can ignore the poorly drawn and prolonged moral fretting of the two murderers, the difficulty in seeing how the innocent suspect is involved, and the strange denouement.

Interesting book, well thought out, clever plot, lots of twists. Well worth a read. Characters well formed. Some you would know from everyday life.

Evocative of Venice a great thriller and well written. Reads like a film and is a story well told. Love venice ? Your can see it as you read

An excellent spy thriller set in Venice just after the war. A range of memorable characters, even though not very likeable, set against the background of a beautiful city and its inhabitants trying to return to some semblance of normal life after the trauma and violence of the conflict. Kanon always researches his books well and this adds additional layers of interest.

I enjoy books set in Venice. This one was decidedly odd. The author had the city's geography correct but kept misnaming locations. Maestre for Mestre, Lista di Espagna for Lista di Spagna, Frazzaria for Frezzeria, San Ivo for San Vio and Santa Maria in Formosa for Santa Maria Formosa. I found the post-war politics a little difficult to follow but others may find it interesting.

A sad tale of deceit & the fragility of human nature. Plenty of characters to dislike & little to uplift. A bit too convoluted particularly at the end.

Kanon is a superb writer and Alibi has all the hallmarks of his fine work: engrossing atmosphere, compelling characters, terrific dialogue, and questions about the moral imperatives facing ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances. It;s great.

Une vraie ambiance vénitienne, par un écrivain qui la connaît bien... Bien plus "réelle" que celle de Donna Leon... L'intrigue est correcte et se laisse lire, malgré quelques longueurs et des poncifs sur les personnages...

Wir werden Zeugen eines -unbeabsichtigten - Mordes und sind nun quasi Komplizen des/der Protagonisten. Kuriose Gesellschaftsschichten verweben sich zu einem Geflecht, in dem schließlich kaum etwas so ist wie es zunächst scheint. Habe ich gerne weiter empfohlen. helibor

Service just as predicted; very fast. Book in new condition.

Excellent