Synopses & Reviews
Spanning the tumultuous years 1934 to 1948, John Lawton's
A Lily of the Field is a brilliant historical thriller from a master of the form. The book follows two charactersMéret Voytek, a talented young cellist living in Vienna at the novel's start, and Dr. Karel Szabo, a Hungarian physicist interned in a camp on the Isle of Man. In his seventh Inspector Troy novel, Lawton moves seamlessly from Vienna and Auschwitz to the deserts of New Mexico and the rubble-strewn streets of postwar London, following the fascinating parallels of the physicist Szabo and musician Voytek as fate takes each far from home and across the untraditional battlefields of a destructive war to an unexpected intersection at the novel's close. The result,
A Lily of the Field, is Lawton's best book yet, an historically accurate and remarkably written novel that explores the diaspora or two Europeans from the rise of Hitler to the post-atomic age.
Review
"An unbearably tense account of two musicians whose lives and careers are shattered in the aftermath of the Anschluss . . . Technically dazzling. Lawton keeps his historical perspective on the war while introducing new characters and adding layers of political subtext to the plot."
Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times"Lawton has always pushed the boundaries of the series crime novel, edging ever closer to broad-canvas historical fiction, but this time he has leaped the fence altogether. Like Dennis Lehane in The Given Day, Lawton introduces multiple characters and stories in a sweeping tale that comes together at a particular historical moment, but unlike Lehane, he does all that without abandoning his series hero or the continuity established in the previous volumes . . . A truly multitextured tale."Booklist (Starred Review)
Another complex and compellingly readable historic thriller from Lawton, full of profound questions and memorable characters.”Kirkus Reviews
If you love mystery and history, run out and pick up a book by Lawton, author of the superb Inspector Troy novels.”Mary Ann Gwinn, The Seattle Times
If the previous six installments in John Lawton's Inspector Troy series haven't made the point adequately, the seventh, A Lily of the Field, makes it again, and solidly: Lawton's thrillers provide a vivid, moving and wonderfully absorbing way to experience life in London and on the Continent before, during and after World War II.”Gerald Bartell, The Washington Post
John Lawton finds himself in the same boat as the late Patrick OBriana sublimely elegant historical novelist as addictive as crack but overlooked by too many readers for too long. Like OBrian, he inhabits his periods 20th-century tipping points witnessed by the rich and richly ambivalent sleuth Troywith an ownership that leaves most history-bothering authors looking like day-trippers.”Daily Telegraph
Lawton writes with authority. His characters convince, and so does their world. Admirable, ambitious and haunting, this is the sort of thriller that defies categorisation. I look forward with enthusiasm to the next one.”Spectator
John Lawtons books contain such a wealth of period detail, character description and background information that they are lifted out of any category. Every word is enriched by the authors sophistication and irreverent intelligence, by his meticulous research and his wit.”Literary Review
Lawtons Troy books are less detective stories or intelligence thrillers than novels which include both murders and spiesnovels as much about how people and societies grow and change as about the complex messes that Troy finds himself tidying up for his adopted country.”Independent
Lawton handles the chronology with exemplary ease and intelligence.”Guardian
Synopsis
The book opens with a prologue set in a London park in 1948: two men named Viktor and Andre Skolnik are talking. Viktor wishes to be released from his service to the Communist party. Andre says this is impossible.
Back in 1934, in Vienna, 10 year-old Meret Voytek, daughter of a Hungarian theatre director, becomes a pupil of esteemed musician Professor Viktor Rosen, a Jew in exile from Germany. He becomes her mentor, educating her in politics and training her to be a concert-worthy cellist. In November 1937, aware that the Nazis are advancing, Rosen tells Meret he must leave Vienna for London. When Vienna quietly comes under Nazi rule, Meret witnesses the repercussions for the citys Jews, but when her orchestra becomes a division of the Hitler Youth, she complies and wears the uniform.
It is June 1940 and Dr. Karel Szabo, a Hungarian physicist, has been interned in a camp on the Isle of Man, where other detainees include Rosen and an Englishman of Russian birth, Rod Troy. Szabo is transported to Canada and once there is contacted by the US government: they want him for the atomic program. He joins the team assembled by Leo Szilard, a physicist he knew in England, and begins a relationship with Zette Borg, another colleague. Over the years their work progresses.
In 1944, still in Vienna, Meret is taken prisoner when she is found in the company of a fellow musician who is a resistance fighter. She is taken to Auschwitz but is saved from death by an old friend, Magda Ewald, a fellow prisoner who says the concentration camp orchestra needs a cellist. When her cello arrives at the camp from her house in Vienna, she realizes her parents have been killed. As the Russians advance in 1945, Auschwitz is abandoned and Meret and Magda are found by a Russian commander, Major Larissa Tosca, who coerces Meret into becoming a Russian spy.
Szabo and his colleagues watch the first atomic bomb test in a desert in New Mexico. He tells Zette about the petition Leos team has signed asking the government never to use the bomb.
Meret is transferred, via Poland and Vienna, to Paris where she is in the charge of a Russian artist and spy named Serge. She meets a Frenchman she knew from Auschwitz but he has not recovered and on a subsequent meeting commits suicide in front of her. Finally she journeys to London to meet Rosen, who previously has begun giving piano lessons to Rod Troys younger brother, one Frederick Troy, a Scotland Yard detective.
Time moves forward to 1948 and the prologue is repeated: the man named Viktor is Rosen; he has been a Communist spy since 1918.
Troy is called to investigate the death of Andre Skolnik., whom Troys colleague Fish Wally suspects was a Russian agent. Wally suspicions are confirmed when Troy is approached by Milos Danko, a Czechoslovakian agent enquiring about Skolniks death. MI5 want to close the case, but Troy is spurred on by the discovery that the gun used to shoot Skolnik once belonged to a Russian Princess. While holidaying with Anna, a love-interest, Troy gets a sudden phone call: Viktor Rosen has been found shot in his apartment. Troy is hesitant to accept the verdict of suicide. After Rod tells him of Rosens affair with Meret, he interviews her, beginning a tentative friendship. Meanwhile, it is in the newspapers that Szabo has admitted passing information on the atomic bomb to the Russians.
Troys colleague Kolankiewicz turns up a new clue linking the two deaths: Rosens hip flask bears Skolniks prints. When Troy hears a recording of Meret and Rosen playing on the radio, he discovers a code in their alterations to the piece. As he begins to piece everything together, he is visited again by Danko, seeking vengeance for Skolniks death, and is forced to kill him and his henchmen in self-defence. Troy goes to meet Meret, who has also been visited by the Czechs, and confronts her about spying for the Russians. She admits everything, including that she killed Skolnik and outed Szabo in an attempt to allow her and Viktor to cut their ties. Meret leaves for Russia where she believes her high profile will keep her safe once she is publicly denounced and can no longer be used as a spy. She leaves Troy with a letter to give to the British press, along with the pawn ticket for her precious cello.
The newspapers carry the story of Meret and Rosen being spies, and Meret seems to have escaped in time. The book ends with two letters sent by Szabo from prison, one begging understanding for his actions, the other to Meret, who is revealed to be his cousin, promising that they will one day be free.