The Statement Magill Book Reviews

The novel begins when an elderly man, Pierre Brossard, a former Vichy government operative responsible for the death of fourteen Jews in 1944, kills a man named R who has been dispatched to assassinate Brossard. Brossard has spent twenty-five years evading justice by shielding himself with sympathetic and powerful clerics in the Roman Catholic church and influential members of the police. Brossard was captured by the police after the war, and during interrogations offered a confession that led to the capture and punishment of others, earning him a reprieve from punishment.

A new agent is recruited to kill Brossard, and thus begins a complicated game of hide and seek, as the aged Brossard continually gives the younger man the slip. Also involved in the chase are an army colonel and a judge who plan to capture the fugitive before he is executed and to use his confession to bring more prominent officials and malefactors to justice. Simultaneously the Catholic church has issued an order that war criminals, and Brossard in particular, are not to be aided any longer. Brossard kills his second pursuer, while government officials in turn succeed in assassinating the man and preventing the embarrassing revelation of more influential war criminals.

On one level, THE STATEMENT is a roman a clef based on the life of Paul Touvier, a functionary of the Vichy government who after the war was found guilty of war crimes, sheltered by the Catholic church, and pardoned by President Georges Pompidou. To this, Moore grafts the conventions of the popular thriller—dramatic action, intrigue, rapid pacing, and clandestine machinations—with a moral seriousness that is profound and compelling. The novel also represents a return to Moore’s examination of the influence of the Catholic church and the place of faith in a modern, secular world.

Sources for Further Study

The Christian Science Monitor. July 25, 1996, p. B3.

Commonweal. CXXIII, October 25, 1996, p. 24.

The Economist. CCCXXXVII, October 28, 1995, p. 102.

Library Journal. CXXI, May 1, 1996, p. 132.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. June 23, 1996, p. 4.

Maclean’s. CVIII, September 25, 1995, p. 53.

New Statesman and Society. VIII, September 22, 1995, p. 34.

The New York Times. June 3, 1996, p. C13.

The New York Times Book Review. CI, June 30, 1996, p. 12.

The New Yorker. LXXII, July 15, 1996, p. 78.

The Observer. October 1, 1995, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly. CCXLIII, April 22, 1996, p. 57.

Time. CXLVIII, July 1, 1996, p. 62.

The Times Literary Supplement. September 22, 1995, p. 22.

The Wall Street Journal. June 4, 1996, p. A16.