All Human Wisdom

Terrific . . . Easily the most purely entertaining novel I have read so far this year David Mills, The Sunday Times\r\n\r\nA really excellent suspense novelist Stephen King\r\n\r\nThe second volume of Pierre Lemaitres enthralling, award-winning between-the-wars trilogy\r\n\r\nIn 1927, the great and the good of Paris gather at the funeral of the wealthy banker, Marcel Pericourt. His daughter, Madeleine, is poised to take over his financial empire (although, unfortunately, she knows next to nothing about banking). More unfortunately still, when Madeleines seven-year-old son, Paul, tumbles from a second floor window of the Pericourt mansion on the day of his grandfathers funeral, and suffers life-changing injuries, his fall sets off a chain of events that will reduce Madeleine to destitution and ruin in a matter of months.\r\n\r\nUsing all her reserves of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and a burning desire for retribution, Madeleine sets about rebuilding her life. She will be helped by an ex-Communist fixer, a Polish nurse who doesnt speak a word of French, a brainless petty criminal with a talent for sabotage, an exiled German Jewish chemist, a very expensive forger, an opera singer with a handy flair for theatrics, and her own son with ideas for a creative new business to take Paris by storm.\r\n\r\nA brilliant, imaginative, free-falling caper through between-the-wars Paris, and a portrait of Europe on the edge of disaster.\r\n\r\nTranslated from the French by Frank Wynne\r\n\r\n\r\nFrom the reviews for The Great Swindle\r\n\r\nThe most purely enjoyable book Ive read this year Jake Kerridge, Sunday Telegraph\r\n\r\nThe vast sweep of the novel and its array of extraordinary secondary characters have attracted comparisons with the works of Balzac. Moving, angry, intelligent - and compulsive Marcel Berlins, The Times