THE FURY OF RACHEL MONETTE

by Peter Abrahams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 25, 1980

Like Barbara Betcherman's Suspicions (p. 301), this suspense debut features a tough, suddenly husbandless heroine who impetuously (rather implausibly) covers the globe to uncover a nasty conspiracy; and, like Suspicions, it begins with brisk stylishness and seductive mystery but eventually loses its distinctiveness as the usual convolution of thriller clichÉs (neo-Nazis, heavy coincidences, bodies falling left and right) takes over. Rachel Monette, wife of Williams prof Dan (French-born author of a book on Vichy collaboration with the Final Solution), comes home one day to find Dan stabbed to death and their little son Adam kidnapped--by a man posing as a rabbi. The only clue: a letter in Dan's safe deposit box concerning a 1942 assignment of three German soldiers to ""Camp Siegfried"" in (supposedly unoccupied) west North Africa. And when more violence ensues, Rachel (who has eliminated an assassin/arsonist by skewering him with a ski pole) takes off determined to locate Camp Siegfried, unlock the mystery of that 1942 letter, and find her son. Meanwhile, in Israel, the charismatic leader of the rights-movement for Sephardic and Oriental Jews--Moroccan-bred Simon Calvi--is planning to make a dangerously divisive, even downright pro-Arab speech; he's also consorting with suspicious types and apparently planning his own fake death. The connection? Well, as Rachel discovers in Nice (after she digs up remains of a Sahara death-camp, is imprisoned, and kills again), ""Simon Calvi"" was one of those Nazi soldiers at Camp Siegfried in 1942; the murder/kidnap is part of a plot to keep Calvi's past a secret! This is a perfectly workable premise--with real resonance in that Vichy death-camp background and a nice Rachel/Calvi showdown at the Wailing Wall. But Abrahams strains credibility by giving the plot one or two tangles too many (Calvi is really a German-Jewish good guy being controlled by a neo-Nazi mastermind); and the relatively ambitious characterizations here get plowed under in the corpse-littered, ill-paced final chapters, as un-killable Rachel survives attack after attack to unmask the (very guessable) villain. Still: above-average conspiracy suspense--never dull or offensive, often evocative--with enough texture in those opening chapters to suggest that first-novelist Abrahams might well want to try his hand at more serious fiction next time around.

Pub Date: Aug. 25, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION