We know that Lucien is a lustful person himself, but Belfoure has let us see that mistress Adele has more lovers among the occupiers, and in turn Adele has introduced Lucien to more women who seem happy to accommodate him. The hunters are held back only by idle inferiors, rivalry between forces, and their personal lusts. When they realise that there is intelligence in the hiding and the construction of the hiding places, their malevolence shows no mercy. And reparations to make to those still living.Īuthor Belfoure takes a sweeping point of view, so we see Lucien's life, the point of view sometimes swapping to the home life of those with whom he has made contact, and then, to heighten tension, swapping to the Gestapo, SS and army officers who have taken the hunt to heart.

It has been said that a surgeon can bury his mistakes while an architect can only advise his client to plant vines, but Lucien, when things go wrong, as once they do, has bodies to dispose of with no legal means. He has more to learn, too, as the construction of hiding places is not something taught at college, and while the refugees in hiding face death if discovered, the very nature of their hiding places means they can be death-traps in other ways. With so much of French society being viciously anti-Semitic, Lucien must learn to dissemble.

Not so good, either, for Lucien's blood pressure is that he has gained the contract as the corollary to another piece of work, to construct hiding places for Jewish refugees, in the way that Elizabethan carpenters constructed priest-holes in English homes centuries before. Unfortunately, for a patriotic Frenchman, such factories are being built to supply the German war machine with its tools. Lucien has the opportunity to build the big, light, sweeping factories that his architectural hero Walter Gropius of the Bauhaus recommends. We meet him just as he has discovered what the fall of his city has meant – innocent people suffering terrible deaths in the street – even while he is on his way to the meeting that could put business his way to ensure that he can maintain his lifestyle under the occupation.

He has not experienced total failure, though, as he has managed to keep his glamorous mistress even after the Nazi forces have conquered the city and encouraged many Parisians to become horizontal collaborationists. Lucien Bernard is the eponymous protagonist of Charles Belfoure's first novel, a fan of the Bauhaus and art deco movements, who is unhappy with his lack of social success but also scared of opportunity in case he fails.

Author of the paris architect