Alibi

From the Publisher

"Burrowing deeply into Patricia Highsmith territory, Kanon has crafted an absorbing tale. . . . [Kanon] is frequently compared to the likes of John le Carré and Graham Greene. With Alibi, he shows that he's up to the comparison."—San Francisco Chronicle

"Kanon's richest, most full-blooded work to date . . . [He] has mastered the art of the historical thriller."—The New York Times Book Review

"Disturbing and hypnotically readable, Alibi is a mystery, a love story, and a work of philosophy—and a perfect companion for the thriller reader who wants a philosophical challenge, as well as entertainment."—Richmond Times-Dispatch

"Joseph Kanon is a specialist in superior historical thrillers. . . . Moody, deeply atmospheric, and as labyrinthine as the streets of Venice."—The Seattle Times

"Alibi is a thriller with a slide-rule perfect plot. . . . Wholly engrossing and one of the finest thrillers you will read this year—up there with the classics of the genre."—The Daily Telegraph (London)"If you want to explore life, love, death, beauty, and moral confusion—all glimpsed from a gondola, so to speak—you won't do much better than this."—The Washington Post "Once again Kanon has written a novel set against the backdrop of World War II that is evocative and sensitive, moody and thought-provoking."—Arizona Daily Star

"Alibi is an absorbing and fast-paced book."—New Mystery Reader Magazine "Kanon keeps us turning pages. . . . His best book yet."—The Winston-Salem Journal "Kanon juxtaposes a powerful love story and a gripping thriller against a palpable historical moment. . . . The novel holds us completely, with its vision of a sadly inadequate hero striking deep at our worst fears about ourselves."—Booklist

"You will admire this book for its descriptions of the theatrically beautiful Venetian cityscape and for its engrossing rendition of the city's postwar hangover-party mood—plus the inclusion of a cracking good murder mystery."—The News & Observer

"Extraordinarily well-crafted and well-written . . . Kanon's storytelling talents for intrigue may be unparalleled."—Deseret Morning News

"Kanon offers such vivid sensory detail that a reader emerges as steeped in atmospherics as a seasoned diplomat with a passport full of visa stamps. You feel initiated, as if you've been let in on some dark and well-kept secrets from some of the twentieth century's most pivotal moments. . . . In Kanon's eclectic cast of policemen, soldiers, revolutionaries, and ex-pat socialites, no one is spared the deep, dark smudges offered by war and its aftermath."—Baltimore Sun

"If you want to explore life, love, death, beauty, and moral confusion, you won't do much better than this."—San Jose Mercury News

Joseph Finder

Venice, the ancient city-state so renowned for conspiracies and assassinations, where out-of-favor doges were blinded over live coals and bodies strung up between the ''fatal pillars'' of the Doge's Palace turned red from blood, was largely spared the bombing of the last world war. It was never a center of wartime intrigue. Yet Kanon has chosen Venice as the unlikely location for his latest novel, Alibi, and it turns out to have yielded his richest, most full-blooded work to date.
— The New York Times

Patrick Anderson

What do we make of all this? I have a friend who reads thrillers not for their plots but for their "atmospherics," and I think she would probably love Alibi. For my part, I think Kanon writes gorgeous prose and creates intriguing characters, but this time he has given us a story that is a bit overwrought. Still, if you want to explore life, love, death, beauty and moral confusion -- all glimpsed from a gondola, so to speak -- you won't do much better than this.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

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.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

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. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Venice-just after WWII-full of charm and romance, secrets and lies. Adam Miller, newly discharged from the U.S. Army, joins his mother, newly arrived in Venice. She's taken a house on the Grand Canal. Both are at loose ends-Grace because it's in her nature to be that way, Adam because the war and its aftermath have unsettled him, left him emotionally wary. At a party, however, he meets lovely Claudia Grassini and plunges into a passionate affair with her. The attraction is mutual, but Claudia is a complex woman with a painful, embittering history. She's an Italian Jew the Fascists sent to their pet concentration camp at Fossoli, where she knows she should have died along with all the others. The fact that she didn't has burdened her with survivor guilt. Meanwhile, Grace has romance in her life, too. His name is Gianni Mangioni, a doctor, an aristocrat and an old flame. In the years between the wars, they were part of a circle of friends who romped together the way only the rich and privileged can. But Adam doesn't trust Gianni, senses something bogus about him, wonders what he was up to when the Germans were in Occupation. Until his discharge, Adam was an intelligence officer and war crimes investigator in Berlin, and he decides to make a project out of Gianni, a decision that opens Pandora's box with a vengeance: people die, lives are ruined and Adam finds himself confronting excruciating choices-not only the one between justice and legality, but the rarer, more subtle, harder one between justice and morality. Interesting characters, an affecting love story and a strong plot that unfortunately sags midway. But Kanon (The Good German, 2001, etc.) is a true talent: eventually, he mightwrite thrillers as impeccable as Graham Greene's. Author tour