THE GOOD ASSASSIN

The compelling story of the pursuit of a man responsible for the murders of at least 30,000 Latvian Jews during World War II.

Talty, whose bestselling books include The Black Hand and A Captain’s Duty (which was made into the Oscar-winning Tom Hanks vehicle Captain Phillips), remains true to his technique, delivering thoroughly researched, engrossing nonfiction in a thrillerlike narrative style. The author has several stories to tell, including that of Latvian murderer Herbert Cukurs, who transformed from a heroic civil aviator to a brutal executioner; the Holocaust in Latvia in general; Zelma Shepshelovich, a young Jewish woman who managed to escape capture and deportation; a Mossad agent called Mio, who endeared himself to Cukurs before leading him to his death in a house in Uruguay; the battle against granting amnesty to Nazis some years after the war; and Nazi hunters Tuviah Friedman and Simon Wiesenthal. Talty weaves these stories throughout the text, creating a rich narrative fabric, and the tension increases substantially when Mio finds Cukurs, who is suspicious and cautious, in Brazil and convinces the murderer that he is looking to get involved in business deals with him. The intense climax of the action (the death of Cukurs) occurs more than 40 pages before the end of the text; the final pages deal with the immediate and later after-stories of the principal characters. The author reveals both the profound darkness of the time period and the slender rays of hope that occasionally split it. The Holocaust accounts—degradations, torture, murder, etc.—are difficult to read yet nonetheless important. “Cukurs was hardly unique; there were many men like him in Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, and elsewhere,” writes Talty. “But in his local context, he was the leading monster.”

As anti-Semitism surges once again, this page-turning history reminds us of the sanguinary consequences of unchecked hatred.