cover image A Matter of Conscience

A Matter of Conscience

Palma Harcourt. Beaufort Books, $14.95 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-8253-0305-0

As in Harcourt's previous books (Shadows of Doubt, Climate for Conspiracy), this thriller is populated by couriers, assassins, politicos on the cabinet level, grieving women and secret intelligence operatives, through each of whose eyes the narrative proceeds. Dermot Piercey of British Secret Intelligence must determine the whereabouts of Keith Dayton, who has disappeared in Germany with a list of 10 British citizens marked for assassination. Does Dayton's wife, Polish-born Irena, know these names? Or his daughter, Caro, engaged to a purported victim? Initially intriguing, the plot hinges on several implausible factors, not the least of which is that Israel's Mossad has drawn up the list of victims, all members of a British anti-Semitic cabal. Harcourt's prose is concise and literate, however, and although much of the dialogue and action takes place in a static environment, the novel's central secret is artfully withheld to the last. February 7