The Blameless Dead
Described by the publisher as an “epic edge of the seat drama”, The Blameless Dead confirms that claim.
The open hostilities of the Second World War may have ceased in 1945, but the corrosive damage of the preceding years spanned decades and was to reach as far as our own time. Gary Haynes tells a brutal story of unrelenting revenge. His highly complex plot requires concentration from the reader, who must absorb not only frequent shifts in time as well as location, but the involvement of a plethora of characters who repeatedly enter and exit the storyline. Some, more than others, will remain with us: Gabriel Hall, the professorial lawyer, Carla Romero, an FBI agent, and the SS Colonel Lutz Richter are all particularly neatly established and convincingly sustained.
The Blameless Dead is an extremely brutal depiction of violent retribution, carried out, almost exclusively, by individuals whose capacity for compassion has been destroyed by the atrocities they have witnessed or that have been inflicted upon them during, or as a result of the war and then, as a consequence, perpetrated by them.
The brutality in this novel is integral to its intentions. Pulled punches would not have been sufficient to justify the level of the necessity for vengeance which permeates it.
The skill Gary Haynes exhibits lies not only in his obvious talent as a storyteller but also in the quality of his writing. In his depiction of his characters and the weird and frequently sinister situations and locations in which they operate, he writes both economically and imaginatively, even delicately, without for one moment slowing down the powerful movement of his plot.
Despite the violence and the gore there is sensitivity and humanity here. This is a good read on many levels.
