Paul Baumann
Keneally is comfortable with explicitly religious themes and employs them mostly to good effect. With its dizzying moral ironies, smart pace and deft set pieces, his novel evokes Graham Greene -- especially the Graham Greene of Brighton Rock. Like that novel, Office of Innocence features both a psychopathic killer with theological pretensions and crucial confessional scenes. — The New York Times
The Washington Post
Since he published his first novel in 1964, Thomas Keneally has been writing prolifically -- historical and contemporary novels, nonfiction, children's books, dramas, not to mention screenplays. Refusing to be bound by nationality, era or challenging subject matter, he is a model of a working writer, and his quiet, lithe style moves effortlessly from book to book. Yet each is entirely different in subject, plot and atmosphere. He is not a predictable writer, except in readability, research and craftsmanship. — Brigitte Weeks
Publishers Weekly
Keneally steers a young, na ve Australian priest through a series of complex moral choices in his latest novel, which takes place early in WWII with the Japanese forces steadily advancing southward. The insular existence of Catholic cleric Frank Darragh is disturbed when he is approached by a beautiful married woman named Kate Heggarty, whose husband has been captured by the Germans in North Africa. Darragh tries to comfort her, but Heggarty retains her combative stance toward traditional Catholicism as she drifts toward infidelity as a possible means of solace. In spite of his halfhearted efforts to deny her charms, Darragh's growing infatuation becomes an issue when Heggarty is suddenly murdered and the local detectives try to implicate him. Darragh also faces trouble from his conservative monsignor, who sends the priest away on retreat for involving the parish in the investigation. Despite the admonitions of his superior, Darragh puts considerable effort into trying to clarify his role in Heggarty's death, until a U.S. soldier from a nearby American base provides a stunning and compromising revelation regarding the killer's identity. Keneally portrays his protagonist's innocence with a keen but subtle sense of irony, and the surprising plot twists help him steer clear of the usual clich s afflicting novels about compromised clerics. But the true excellence of the book lies in the author's ability to blend his depiction of a seaside village in crisis as the Japanese threaten to invade with the nuances of morality and faith that constantly keep Darragh at odds with himself. The novel lacks the weight of Schindler's List or Keneally's narrative history The Great Shame, but it is a sterling effort on a smaller scale. (Mar. 18) Forecast: Sales should be solid, despite the out-of-the-way setting and relatively narrow scope. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
The prolific Australian author who brought us Schindler's List offers a profound and moving novel about one young priest's crisis of faith in Sydney during World War II. Father Frank Darragh already feels conflicted about being out of the fighting when his regular duties as a soft-hearted confessor at St. Margaret's begin to put him in touch with war widows and American GIs. He is especially intrigued by Kate Heggarty, who seeks spiritual guidance when she's tempted to cheat on her P.O.W. husband. The monsignor objects to Father Frank's becoming so involved in her case, which explodes in the young priest's face when Kate turns up strangled. Father Frank's struggles to deal with the violent crime (and accusations that he caused Kate's death), while confronting the church hierarchy and his own shattered faith, fully reveal his humanity. A wonderful but never easy novel.-Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., VA
Kirkus Reviews
Both the lure and the ordeal of the priestly life, as explored in gratifying detail and depth by the eminent Australian novelist and historian (Abraham Lincoln, p. 1591, etc.). The conflicted protagonist is Father Frank Darragh, a recently ordained young Catholic priest serving in a suburb of Sydney during the early 1940s, when war in the Pacific Theater includes Japan's takeover of the Malay Peninsula and increasingly threatening nearby presence. Father Frank, an imperfectly obedient "young Turk" to his worldly superior Monsignor Carolan, soon becomes involved with-and troubled by-a rich variety of errant parishioners: a guilty young bloke traumatized by his single sexual experience with a transvestite; a ménage including terminal TB patient Mrs. Flood, her passive husband, and fiery younger lover; an American soldier who seems prepared to buy absolution for himself and his several loved ones; and-crucially-beautiful Kate Heggarty, whose husband is a German POW and whose frank embrace of adultery triggers several tense conversations with Father Frank. The narrative in fact abounds with such conversations, as the hopeful novice intrudes himself into the case of an AWOL black soldier held in a military prison, and incurs suspicion when Kate Heggarty is found murdered and the priest's "relationship" with her is revealed. The story is very neatly plotted, and Keneally handles with great skill Darragh's climactic meeting with the guiltiest of his flock, just as Japanese submarines invade Sydney Harbor. Nevertheless, Office of Innocence succeeds best as a searching analysis of the religious life; it's a richer, more mature counterpart to Keneally's somewhat similar 1969 fiction, Three Cheersfor the Paraclete. This world-renowned, award-winning author has produced more than two dozen novels, including a major one, Bettany's Book, that preceded this one-and has not yet appeared in the US. Why not?
