Liaty Pisani
Agguato a Montsegur

Published by Diogenes as Der Spion und der Bankier
English Title: The Spy and the Banker

A Swiss banker is found dead and his son disappears the next day. Ogden, who has just retired from the secret service, is engaged in the role of a private detective to find the twenty-year-old Willy. But the affair is not as private as it seems at first glance. Willy knows something that cost his father his life – something to do with the whereabouts of Jewish wealth in the nineteen-forties. Willy’s father showed him documents which alarm not only the banks but also a number of foreign secret services. These fifty-year-old stories are by no means forgotten, and the missing money is now in the hands of important state-leading institutions. Ogden is once again in his familiar metier. The search for Willy takes him from Zurich to the South of France where Willy, following his intuition, fled to the land of the Cathars. These heretics were fought in the Middle Ages – as were the Jews even at that time – and unnihilated in the Albigensian Crusade. Topical issues get mixed up with history, private matters mingle with political affairs, and national and temporal borders merge. Liaty Pisani approaches the theme of genocide with great sensitivity while at the same time developing an exciting plot with an almost Spielberg-like finale.

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