Title: The Odessa file
Author: Frederick Forsyth
My rating: ****
Well it's not often that you come across a thriller that you take to the loo that makes you forget the main purpose of your visit until your legs go numb and your wife's madly banging on the door. Little does she know that you were in the middle of a plot so intriguing and involving that you think little of the job long done.
Set on the aftermath of the nazi war crimes, an ordinary reporter lays his hands on a dossier left by a dead jew relating the atrocities dealt by the SS and one Eduard Roschmann in particular. Acting under the facade of having found the story of a lifetime, he ups himself against the clandestine yet highly brutal organization of ex-SS that goes by the name ODESSA. In spite of hitting multiple dead-ends his truculence leads him to a point of no return. Was it emotional fervor against the inhumanity, was it for professional success or was there an ulterior motive?
Research so thorough that will leave you agape and the plot so tense that will want you to keep reading. A lot of it has been picked up straight from the history but it blends so well with the fiction. Roschmann was actually the commandant of Riga ghetto and the fact that the book brought him out in the public that led to his arrest is just "wow"!
~Ashish.
