Author | Thomas Keneally |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Novel |
Publisher | Vintage |
Publication date | 31 August 2021 |
Publication place | Australia |
Media type | |
Pages | 352 pp. |
ISBN | 9781760893224 |
Preceded by | The Dickens Boy |
Followed by | Fanatic Heart |
Corporal Hitler's Pistol is a 2021 historical novel by the Australian author Thomas Keneally. [1]
The novel is set in the northern New South Wales town of Kempsey in 1933, where an old German-Australian, Bert Webber, is rumoured to be in possession of Adolf Hitler's pistol from World War I. When Bert sees Hitler on a newsreel at the local cinema he has a fit and is taken to a psychiatric hospital in Sydney. Hitler's pistol is then used to kill an ex-IRA member on a local farm.
Writing in The Guardian reviewer Susan Wyndham described the book as "a rollicking historical crime thriller", before noting that the author displays a "mastery of narrative technique in a series of cinematic set pieces that propel the story forward while intimately developing the characters." [2]