Crimes of War

By Peter Hogg

A respected retired businessman in Winnipeg, well liked by his neighbors, is shattered to receive mysterious photographs in the mail.Photos of him as a young man, in his SS uniform.The Special Prosecutions Unit in Ottawa is dedicated to investigating and indicting Nazi war criminals in Canada. However they never manage to successfully prosecute a single one.Dozens of lawyers, historians, policemen, and clerk amass hundreds of files on suspects, most of whom inconveniently die.Increasingly demoralized by the prospect of the inevitable closing of the unit, many at SPU begin to look forward to the prospect of prosecuting criminals who are not wheel-chair bound.Dennis Connor, a historian, is eventually left as the last employee of the SPU, charged with the closing all of the files.But one file he cannot give up.The crimes Friedrich Reile committed with an SS unit on the Eastern Front are so terrible that Connor cannot close the file and forget them.And so with no legal recourse, Connor begins to send anonymous letters to Reile.The letters and photos bring back memories, and Reile tells his story of how an ordinary seventeen-year-old boy gradually turns into a war criminal, a mass murderer.But Reile, for all his monstrous crimes, is not a monster.Just as Connor, who wishes to be a crusading knight in shining armor, is in fact a cynical bureaucrat leading a joyless life.By showing the human aspect of both these men, Peter Hogg brings a new, deeper element into what could have been a familiar story.With surprising occasional satire, juxtaposing mundane office life with terrible crimes against humanity, this deserved winner of the Robertson Davies/Chapter prize explores the complexities of two men's relationship with evil.AUTHORBIO: Peter Hogg is a Criminal Prosecutor in Vancouver, Canada, specializing in gang and drug related prosecutions.Originally from Manitoba, he has worked for the Department of Justice in Winnipeg and Calgary.From 1993 to 1995 he worked in Ottawa for the War Crimes Unit.This is his first novel.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312269544
• ISBN13: 9780312269548
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 229 Pages
• Weight: 3.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A Moving and Thought-inspiring Read...

As a fan of Canadian literature and authors, I picked up Peter Hogg's "Crimes of War" with a bit of hesitation. Previous to this book, it had been my experience that the 'Nazis' of fiction tend to come off as one-dimensional, with nearly no thought behind them: cardboard villains.This was not the case in "Crimes of War." Hogg has put a monumental amount of thought and effort into making this book not only enjoyable, but emotionally stirring. The main character, like Hogg himself once did, works in the special division of the Canadian Government that tracks down escaped world war II criminals in Canada. Time, however, has made this government office obsolete. The Nazis are dying of old age, and, worse, so are the victims who could identify them even if they were arrested. The office is being closed, and Hogg's protagonist, Dennis Connor, has the distinctly unpleasant duty of being the last one there to shut it down, lock the door, and leave the keys behind.But first, there is one more criminal he knows has escaped into Canada: Reile. Alternating between the view of the war criminal, the protagonist, and dancing between the present and the past, this book is highly evocative. There is a real humanization of the Nazi who is old aged and ailing, and hiding in Canada. Hogg's novel dares to explore what the mass murderers of world war two were like on an individual level - and without pulling punches: Riele is not an apparent monster. As the back of the book says, "Does it makes sense to pursue old men in their seventies or eighties for what they did, under orders, in the tumoil of war in Europe fifty years earlier?" "How can the forces of justive ignore mass murderers among us, regardless of how much time has elapsed since they killed their last child?"The questions, and the book's characters, are disturbing, and dead-on accurate. This is not a light read, nor an easy one, but a very rewarding one. I promise you'll put "Crimes of War" down with many new thoughts.