There seems to be a new wave of fiction based on the Holocaust (what is meant by `the sixth lamentation' in this title) and investigations by the survivors and succeeding generations into the World War II experiences of their Jewish forebears. Other examples are The archivist (by Martha Cooley, 1998), Disturbance of the inner ear (Joyce Hackett, 2003) and The Nose (Elena Lappin, 2003), following the earlier Little boy lost (Marghanita Laski, 1949) and Sophie's Choice (William Styron, 1979).

Incredibly (but necessary for the plot), in the investigation in The Sixth Lamentation, the lawyer-turned-monk main character, entrusted with vitally important documents, `thought of making photocopies but didn't. The notion of duplicating the names of the dead seemed somehow irreverent, an act of trespass.' I found it distasteful and irreverent trespass (as in none of the other novels treating this topic) to use the dreadful events of the Holocaust as the basis of a thriller, over-long (430 pages) and crammed with secrets discovered, identities permuted, papers lost, found and destroyed, dramatic revelations, ecclesiastical plotting, revisionism, revenge sought, murder threatened, misapprehensions and cross-purposes galore.

The language is maladroit to the point of mystification. An adolescent girl records in her journal, after a boy tells her, `I think I may be attached to you', `I woke the next morning with a fountain spurting from the pit of my stomach'. Menstruation? Vomiting? First love? An attack of nerves? Who can tell?

This first-time novelist was an Augustinian friar before becoming a barrister; his chief protagonist, Father Anselm, was a barrister before becoming a monk. The two vocations offer fitting keys--logic and compassion--to unlock the doors of this labyrinthine tale. A suspected Nazi war criminal, Eduard Schwermann, asks for sanctuary at Anselm's home, Larkwood Priory. When the Vatican asks Anselm to investigate on its behalf, Anselm finds reason to suspect the church itself may have been complicit in Schwermann's long-ago escape to England. In nearby London, dying Holocaust survivor Agnes Aubret shares a secret with her granddaughter, Lucy: Agnes was part of a French Resistance ring broken by Schwermann. Schwermann's trial begins with both Anselm and Lucy still hurrying to make sense of the past. Sticky strands of deceit, loss, and betrayal bind together a large cast of characters, and untangling them is both difficult and painful. Though Brodrick builds tension slowly (he's better at foreshadowing than planting clues), he's mapped his plot masterfully, and his approach to the thorny issues of justice and punishment is thoughtful and complex.