War, revolution and persecution are near-constants in the lives of the characters in A LILY OF THE FIELD. Méret Voytek's family left eastern Europe for Vienna, city of cafés, theater, art and music, and home to many others who have fled political and ethnic persecution in other countries.
Vienna in 1934 is also home to Viktor Rosen, world-renowned pianist, a Jew and former German Oranienberg camp prisoner during the early days of Nazi Germany. Viktor and Méret come together as devoted teacher and pupil, but their work together ends when Viktor hears the drumbeat of approaching Nazism and flees to England. Despite trying to keep her head down and out of trouble, Méret is arrested and sent to Auschwitz. There, she is relatively lucky. As a non-Jewish political prisoner and talented musician, she is put in the Auschwitz orchestra.
London, like Vienna, is also home to many refugees. It was where Detective Inspector Frederick Troy's family landed after fleeing the Russian revolution and making stops in Vienna, where Troy's brother Rod was born, and Paris, where his twin sisters were born.
Wartime England treats its citizens and residents born in the Axis countries no better than the US did. Rod Troy is rounded up, along with Viktor Rosen, physicist Karel Szabo and many others, and interned on the Isle of Man and various other spots. They call themselves the Stinking Jews, regardless of actual religious affiliation, and the bonds they forge during internment continue even after the war.
After the war, Méret and Viktor and reunited in London and continue their musical careers, with Méret fulfilling her early promise as a celloist. Karel Szabo, who worked on the Manhattan [A-Bomb] Project while interned, is back in England and working in physics again. Rod Troy, having been allowed out of internment to become an RAF flying ace, is now an MP living a posh life, but he hosts frequent reunions of his Stinking Jews friends, including Viktor and Karel.
When an acquaintance of Viktor, an impoverished but flamboyant Polish painter, is murdered in a Tube station with a most unusual gun, Frederick Troy's investigations take him into the lives of the Stinking Jews and Méret. He soon finds himself caught up in Cold War espionage as well.
Like its predecessor, SECOND VIOLIN, A LILY OF THE FIELD is filled with music and melancholy. Though there is a mystery to be solved, the heart of the book is the personal stories of characters whose lives are forever marked by prejudice and persecution. Every character seems real, from the main characters to the many side characters, including Frederick Troy's old lover Anna, her alcoholic husband with a tin leg he has named Ernest, cantankerous coroner Kolankiewicz, ballistics expert Bob Churchill, and even Ruby the prostitute, whose corner is just outside Troy's house.
As mysteries go, this is an unconventional book. The murder and its investigation take place in the second half of the book. The first half tells Méret's, Viktor's and Karel's stories, which are compelling and range from Vienna to Auschwitz, to internment camps in England and Canada and to Manhattan Project sites in Chicago, Tennessee and Los Alamos. This is a fascinating and affecting historical mystery that I count as one of best books of the year.
I highly recommend all of John Lawton's Frederick Troy series, which would ideally be read in chronological order, rather than publication order. Here is the chronological order of titles:
Second Violin
Bluffing Mr. Churchill (apa Riptide)
Black Out
A Lily of the Field
Old Flames
Flesh Wounds (apa Blue Rondo)
A Little White Death
