Spying, Lying, and Smog in Nazi Britain

I already named C.J. Sansom’s historical espionage thriller, Dominion (Mantle UK), in Kirkus Reviews as one of my 10 favorite crime novels of 2012. But I still have a few more things to say about that “alternative history” work, and offer up those remarks today in my Kirkus column. I write, in part:

Dominion is plump with character studies, if light on the sort of action familiar from numerous spy novels. It’s more a slow-burning but captivating, 593-page political thriller rife with resisters and collaborators, none of them wholly virtuous or venal. And it proposes a raft of British historical figures who, under the circumstances outlined here, might ultimately have sided with the Nazis--speculation that could earn the author a flurry of outraged letters from those people’s descendants. Sansom also highlights the destructive potential of government policies rooted in nationalism and racial enmity, both of which, he observed in an essay for The Guardian newspaper, recently “came to the fore again in Europe as economic crisis gripped the continent ...”

You can enjoy the complete piece here.

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