A worthy member of the Troy canon, although perhaps not one to start with: much of Troy's backstory is taken as read, and indeed his shenanigans and foibles are less to the fore than usual.

The main interest of the novel, for me, lies in its clever interplay between fact and (historical) fiction, as in A Little White Death (a reading of the Profumo affair). Here Troy finds himself investigating a murder and the events in its wake which have to do with Soviet spies in England in the early 1950s. Yes, of course: Guy Burgess does make a cameo appearance.

Lawton as usual exploits his skill in the use of wry irony, as characters and their circumstances now well known are revealed in the novel not through the unfolding of events, but through Troy's super-sensitive reading of the situation.

Another special pleasure is Lawton's undoubted mastery of writing about music.

Happily, if rather surprisingly for Troy fans, our hero manages to contain his sometimes egregious sexual urges in this one.
( )

Finally finished this. The early scenes with the young Méret as she studies with Vicktor are often lyrical, helped perhaps by the numerous allusions to classical music. If you love the classics you will enjoy those references. It's 1934 through the beginning of the war in Austria at the start. The Nazis have begun to show their true colors and some Jews who had already fled Germany were now trying to get to England. I love the way Lawton describes the English naïveté: "Think of them as children. Think of Europe as the drawing room and England as the kindergarten of Europe. They are innocents. They actually boast of not having been invaded since 1066. When in fact all that means is that they have lived outside the mainstream of Europe. They are innocents.. . .Good God, why London? Why not Paris or Amsterdam? What does London have to offer? The madman Thomas Beecham. Beecham waving his baton in the pouring rain for a nation of philistines in wet wool and false teeth!”

But I thought the book dragged once they all got to England and I just didn't find it as interesting nor comprehensible. ( )

My first encounter with Frederick Troy and with his author, John Lawton. This is clearly a slightly odd series, the order I'm which the books have been written and published is different from their chronological order. Given that I like to read books in the latter and that this is not the first in either order, I was a bit wary of the "spoiler" effect, but thankfully there is only one real giveaway about previous stories; so I should be able to read more if the opportunity arises, but I won't be actively seeking them out!
The story is fine, but the set up takes 150 pages with only a fleeting glimpse of the protagonist. The writing is interesting without ever become compelling. I enjoyed it in a fairly passive sort of way.
By the way, I struggle with the comparison to Le Carre. ( )

A worthy member of the Troy canon, although perhaps not one to start with: much of Troy's backstory is taken as read, and indeed his shenanigans and foibles are less to the fore than usual.

The main interest of the novel, for me, lies in its clever interplay between fact and (historical) fiction, as in A Little White Death (a reading of the Profumo affair). Here Troy finds himself investigating a murder and the events in its wake which have to do with Soviet spies in England in the early 1950s. Yes, of course: Guy Burgess does make a cameo appearance.

Lawton as usual exploits his skill in the use of wry irony, as characters and their circumstances now well known are revealed in the novel not through the unfolding of events, but through Troy's super-sensitive reading of the situation.

Another special pleasure is Lawton's undoubted mastery of writing about music.

Happily, if rather surprisingly for Troy fans, our hero manages to contain his sometimes egregious sexual urges in this one. ( )

"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin"
Matthew 6:28
I think perhaps my reading of this book suffered from the fact that the series this is part of is already well underway. I definitely didn't enjoy it as much as my friend and fellow blogger at CRIME SCRAPS REVIEW.

In the first half of the book Lawton introduces us to a rich cavalcade of characters all affected by the rise of the Third Reich and the advance of Hitler's troops into Poland and Austria. Some, Jews, Gentiles, Viennese, Poles, flee to England as early as 1935 ahead of the advance. Others are snatched off the streets and put onto trains taking them to Auschwitz.

Some meet again in England when they are rounded up into internment camps and then shipped off to Canada. Others meet in Auschwitz. Some survive because of their talents, others because they sell their souls to the devil, some because they do both.

And then the war ends and we are back in England and the crime fiction part of the novel begins with the murder on a tube station platform of one of the refugees and the subsequent involvement of Freddie Troy of Scotland Yard, his own family Russian refugees just thirty years before.

I think the richness of the information in the first half of the novel made it hard for the reader to decide what was important and what wasn't, what did I need to remember for later reference? Looking at the two halves of the novel, I think perhaps the author had a problem in deciding what he was writing: a historical fiction about the dreadful events of the Holocaust, or a murder mystery set in a Britain still under rationing and full of very confused,damaged, and often eccentric people.

But where I am torn is that this is a novel that makes you think, and, as readers of this blog will know, this is something that I value highly in my reading. A LILY OF THE FIELD presents scenarios that were new to me, and situations that I have not given much thought to before. The historical detail is rich and authentic. I think perhaps it was because there was so much detail that I had a problem in achieving focus and I found myself wondering in the first half of the novel when the crime fiction was going to kick in. It seemed that in the face of such inhumanity an "ordinary" murder would be very low key.

Freddie Troy is an interesting and quirky character who really operates by his own rules and his own sense of justice. He's a maverick in a world that is trying to establish order. ( )