Lying With the Enemy

The peaceful world of German-occupied Guernsey, the only British territory to be occupied by the Nazis during World War II, turns horribly mad after the body of a murdered young woman turns up, igniting an atmosphere of suspicion and anger as the search for the killer reveals dark secrets.

The notion of how Britain might have fared under German occupation has been explored in speculative fiction before, but it is often forgotten that the British Channel Islands, lying offshore from France, were in fact occupied by the Nazis during WWII. Out of that oddity British novelist Binding (In the Kingdom of the Air) has fashioned a highly readable but strangely hybrid sort of book, part murder mystery, part romance, part a study of duty and obsession. The German commander on the island of Guernsey, gentlemanly and artistic Major Lensch, is in love with a local girl, who is found brutally murdered, her body thrown down a tunnel in the German fortifications. Inspector Ned Luscombe, who had also been fond of the girl, has to try to carry out his investigations alongside the occupiers and pick his way among a maze of resentments as sullen islanders watch many of their women turn into romantic collaborators. But the time is 1943, and already it looks as though the tide is beginning to turn against the uneasy Germans. Perhaps Hitler will visit the island, in which case tough old gardener Albert, who has nothing much to live for since his beloved daughter evacuated to England, has prepared an unpleasant surprise for him. Binding paints a thoroughly convincing picture of the odd relationships of the island's upper crust and the invaders, with authentic details of wartime life (particularly an unlikely passion for impossible-to-obtain Bird's Custard, which plays a major role in the plot). But despite some tense and touching scenes, the narrative seems unresolved, as if the author could not make up his mind which of his many absorbing plot lines he should concentrate on.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A different sort of storyteller, English novelist Binding shifts from the macabre world of hangings in A Perfect Execution (1996) to the furtive hazards of collaboration among Britain's Guernsey Islanders under Nazi occupation. For them, the horrors of war are muted, allowing an intensely personal tale of romance, duty, and murder to emerge. Life on Guernsey is certainly different after the Germans arrive, but for all the added gun emplacements, gangs of gaunt foreign laborers, short food rations, and jackbooted troops, it's still possible for two men to be in love with the same woman. Ned Luscombe loved Isobel first, before the war, and she reciprocated even though the chasm of class yawned wide between them. By the time the highly cultured, sensitive Major Lentsch arrives to command the occupation force, however, the ardor between Ned and Isobel has cooled, and as the new head of the island police force Ned can only look on as she takes up with his boss. But then Isobel is murdered, and the two rivals are required to join forces in a painful investigation. Along the way, they become unlikely yet fast friends, though ongoing events keep them from making much headway: Isobel's father, the architect of the island's metamorphosis into a fortress, disappears; a thriving black market involving soldiers and civilians comes to light; Ned's lover before Isobel, Veronica, having already become the daylight mistress of the island's Gestapo chief, secretly harbors one of the starving laborersa boy with the only direct knowledge about who killed Isobel. Churning just below all this, in the witches' brew that Guernsey has become, is the resentment of loyal British citizens whove been too long repressed, and a plot that will mean death for every islander should it be carried out. Credible and extraordinarily revealing: all that we are as humans, good and bad, finds embodiment on this tiny island in the midst of war. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

British author Tim Binding has woven a dark tale of life under German occupation, not in Europe, but on the Channel island of Guernsey. The year is 1943. The Germans have been slaughtered at Stalingrad, and folks in the Fatherland are beginning to think that they may have bitten off considerably more than they can digest--a notion that is affirmed by the realization that boastful Goering's Luftwaffe, the highly touted Nazi air force, cannot keep the Allied bombs from falling. But on Guernsey, captors and captured play at civility. Collaboration is the name of the game, and Nazi officers party regularly with local women. When the lovely Isobel van Dielen--adored by both Ned, a Guernsey-born plainclothes policeman, and Lentsch, a German major--turns up murdered, the delicate balance between occupied and occupier is disrupted. Binding puts a satisfying new spin on the familiar themes of the World War II thriller. Budd Arthur

In 1943, Nazis and their winsome collaborators frolic together on the quiet island of Guernsey, the only British territory under German occupation during World War II. While crews of "foreigns" perish daily digging endless concrete trenches, local girls entertain officers with amateur theatricals and reckless parties. When the body of a young woman is found stuffed down the air shaft of an off-limits bunker, everyone is a suspect, even the islanders themselves, many of whom do not approve of the opportunists among them and are silently recording each transgression and plotting revenge. It falls to Inspector Ned Luscombe to uncover the many secrets of the island he has spent his whole life trying to leave. Binding (A Perfect Execution) subtly portrays the complex motivations of people "with no place to hide, living amongst an enemy who was polite and considerate and bristling with power." Recommended for all libraries.AChristine Perkins, Jackson Cty. Lib. Svcs., Medford, OR
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.