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Indlæser... The Cyclistaf Fred Nath
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Nazi-occupied Aquitaine, 1943: A beautiful young woman is found murdered in the shadow of the Bergerac Prefecture. Auguste Ran, Assistant Chief of Police, suspects Brunner, a German Security Police Major, of the crime. The more Auguste investigates, the more obsessed he becomes with bringing down the seemingly untouchable Brunner. Auguste begins to realise he has been conveniently ignoring the Nazi atrocities going on around him, and understands too late the human cost of his own participation in the internment of the local Jewish population. Driven by conscience and struggling with his Catholic religious beliefs, his actions start to put his own family at risk. Harbouring the daughter of his lifelong Jewish friend Pierre, they are forced into a desperate trek towards neighbouring Switzerland, pursued all the way by the German Sicherheitspolizei. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Fred Nath is a full time neurosurgeon. He lives in the northeast of England with his wife and daughter, his three sons having grown up and flown the coop. In his time, he has run twenty consecutive Great North Run half-marathons, trekked to 6000m in Nepal, crossed the highest mountain pass in the world and began writing, like John Buchan, "because he ran out of penny-novels to read and felt he should write his own." Fred loves a good story, which is why he writes. No library descriptions found. |
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Anyway, on to the Cyclist.
Firstly, the reasoning behind my rating. At the start of the book, I almost thought I wouldn't make it to the end. I was planning on giving it one star. A few chapters in, and I was feeling a little happier about it, but I was still hovering at about one and a half stars. By the end, it was up to three, because the story had hooked me.
But why was I only going to rate it one star? The writing. It's as simple as that. The sentences are clunky, and mainly short. These short sentences got on my nerves, breaking up the flow of the story with too many full stops. The dialogue felt stunted and unrealistic. I know that in reality the characters would be speaking French, and that's difficult to translate into spoken English, but I did feel they could have spoken a little more naturally, and then I could have believed the characters more. And, there was way too much telling instead of showing, to the point where the characters even tell each other unnecessary information just so the reader can know it, even though we know that the characters would know it. It's hard to give the reader all of the information they need when you're writing historical fiction, but there are better ways to do it than this book demonstrated.
That aside, I did enjoy the story. There were some funny lines (one that comes to mind is 'his best friend was a Jew', so like 'but I have gay friends'), and the book did elicit a few giggles from me. The main character was interesting, and I did find myself wanting to know more about him and the way he thought. The ending tugged on my heartstrings a little, and I hadn't been expecting it.
I'm unlikely to reread this book, but I'll keep it on my shelf just in case. :)