Emma H. by II Magdalen

I.I. Magdalen’s Henning Forsell takes up the case of the nineteen-year-old Emma H., well-born, a great beauty, and “apparently” a collaborator, murdered or executed in Belgium in 1945 in the aftermath of the Second World War. .ree men carried out the “execution”: an exiled Hungarian Stalinist who believes in a scientific future; a conservative Catholic intellectual, and a self-made entrepreneurpolitician. All three were in the maquis, though for different reasons; all three fell for Emma, also for different reasons. A fourth, a melancholy, failed Polish pianist, seduced by Emma, was somehow also as involved in her death as in her life.

Once again Henning faces intractable problems that extend far beyond crime, particularly: the nature of collaboration and defeat, personal and public. Emma herself — exquisite, very young, very rich, very talented, impassive yet passionate, is an unforgettable girl-woman whose essential mystery Henning seeks to solve.

I.I. Magdalen is the pseudonym Keith Botsford uses for his series of crime novels. After a notable early career as a novelist and editor, KEITH BOTSFORD describes himself as having been "sidetracked" into journalism (The Sunday Times, The Independent, La Stampa), working variously as sportswriter, food columnist and US correspondent. Half Italian and half American, born in Brussels, educated in England, he returned to writing fiction in 1989 and now lives in Boston where he is a professor of journalism, history and international relations, and edits, with Saul Bellow, The Republic of Letters.