I have reviewed several of Kanon's thrillers on this blog. The Accomplice is as good as any. Aaron Wiley, a desk man for the CIA, is in Hamburg in 1962, visiting his uncle Max, a Holocaust survivor who has spent the postwar years hunting senior Nazis - a sort of rival to Simon Wiesenthal. In 1962 the Israelis have only recently tried Adolph Eichmann, the Man in the Glass Booth, having snatched him from Argentina. Max's target is Otto Schramm, whom he studied medicine with and who picked him out of line-up at Auschwitz to serve as an unwilling assistant. At the same time a wave of the hand from Schramm sent Max's eight-year-old son to the gas chamber. Now, on this autumn afternoon in Hamburg, taking coffee with his nephew, Max spots Schramm strolling in the park. Schramm, who supposedly died in a car crash in Argentina two years ago.
Max suffers a heart attack and dies - but not before passing his mission in life to Aaron, who soon finds himself in Buenos Aires, seducing Schramm's daughter and working with both the CIA and Mossad to capture Schramm.
As always, the depth of Kanon's research is profound. You absolutely believe what he tells you, not only the history and spycraft, but also the exotic settings. Given that two key locations are vast municipal cemeteries in different hemispheres, you have to wonder how Kanon came by his insights. Dedication, no doubt, is the answer. The pace is expertly handled but we wouldn't care about the story if we didn't care about the characters, and we do, even the Nazis. Another great achievement, a worthy addition to Kanon's impressive list.
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