000			02230nam a2200181 4500
010			_a2002104390
020			_a9780743417068
024			_a50800437
050			_aPR6066.E7535
082			_a823.914
100	1		_aChris Petit
245	1		_aThe Human Pool
260			_bAtria _c2002
300			_a352 pages
520			_aAn epic and hauntingly topical geopolitical thriller spanning six decades and three continents, The Human Pool confirms the journalist and award-winning filmmaker Chris Petit as the heir to John le Carre and Robert Harris.THE HUMAN POOLRumors about Willi Schmidt's actions during the Second World War were enigmatic, to say the least. He worked for U.S. Intelligence out of Switzerland; he cut black-market deals on the side; he rescued scores of Jews from the Nazis. Saint or sinner? Either way, Schmidt was strictly murky waters -- and reports of his death in 1945 surprised no one. Sixty years later, Joe Hoover is convinced Schmidt is still alive, armed with a false name and a fortune in pharmaceuticals. For years, Hoover, former Intelligence courier for the American spymaster Allen Dulles, has been haunted by misgivings about his own wartime role in his boss's top-secret financial partnership with the Third Reich. Now, someone wants Hoover dead. Back in Europe, Hoover discovers that operations he thought had ended long ago are still being played out. Forming an uneasy alliance with Vaughan, an undercover journalist investigating neo-Nazi traffic of Kurdish refugees, he begins to unravel a conspiracy that leads deep into his past, to his days mixing with Nazi officers in the supposedly neutral cities of Zurich, Istanbul, and Budapest, where enemies did deals over cocktails. At each step, Hoover finds the shadow of Willi Schmidt and the specter of World War II's most grotesque and enduring legacy -- a trade in people: the human pool.Set against a vivid historical backdrop, "The Human Pool" mixes fiction and fact to explosive effect. Chris Petit has crafted his finestnovel yet -- a cosmopolitan, thinking-person's thriller that turns the world inside out and traces its veins: It spells nothing less than the rebirth of the great espionage novel.
650			_aMystery
999			_c7217 _d7217