An unconvincing plot, but brilliant portrayal of the residual strength of the English class system after WWII. It is for that portrayal that I appreciate this book, in much the same way as I appreciate Evelyn Waugh, although Waugh's plots tended to be better.
Both are holdovers from the glorious days of elitism based on nothing but birth, the right schools and universities (only two of those), even though they are perfectly willing to point out the faults of the system that had protected them.
I was English born and educated and have been a citizen of the US for the past many years, and I imagine both of these authors would be difficult to appreciate for Americans who did not grasp the subtleties of class, especially as it manifests itself in dialog. ( )

In this third volume of the "Alms for Oblivion" sequence Raven manages to mix his customary rumbustiousness with more sensitive issues such as Germans coming to terms with how to interact with the members of the occupying Allied armies and confronting guilt over the Holocaust.
Fragile mathematician Daniel Mond, earmarked for a Fellowship at Cambridge's Lancaster College, is working in the University Library at Gottingen where he is grappling with the matrical studies of the late Professor Dortmund. Dortmund's papers have only become accessible following the end of the war and were, anyway, composed in a tightly formed encryption for which there is no key. Despite everyone with whom he has any contact advsisng him to desist, Mond stubbornly applies himself to the dissection of the Dortmund papers and gradually makes headway, uncovering a wholly new branch of maths with potential implications for the understanding (and possibly control) of the movements of tiny particles under duress (with the unspoken application to atomic weaponry lurking behind every page).
He briefly becomes friendly with an American student, Earle Restarick, who appears to be working on aspects of modern history, though is never seen to be doing any work. For a historian Restarick seems to take an uncanny interest in Mond's progress, while constantly advising him to leave off. When these attempts to persuade Mond fail, Restarick briefly disappears, ostensibly visiting colleagues elsewhere in occupied Germany, and when he returns to Gottingen he is notably distant towards Mond.
Meanwhile Mond has fallen in with some of the British soldiers based at the local barracks, including the occasionally petulant Captain Fielding Gray, with whom he becomes very friendly.
Raven's customary prose is evident throughout, and this rather odd story readily holds the reader's interest. ( )