The Final Reckoning

British author Bourne (the pseudonym of Jonathan Freedland) wisely eschews another foray into Da Vinci Code territory, like The Righteous Men or The Last Testament, in this solid suspense novel focused on the recent past. Former U.N. lawyer Tom Byrne gets an early morning phone call from his old boss, Henning Munchau, who wants Tom back for one more job. A guard at the U.N. building has just shot a suspected terrorist who was thought to be a suicide bomber, except it turns out that this supposed terrorist is Gerald Merton, a 77-year-old Lithuanian Holocaust survivor who as a child fought the Nazis as part of the Jewish underground. When Byrne investigates, he finds that Merton is not as innocent as he appears, and that his visit to the U.N. concerns a great secret that spans the years from the end of WWII to the present. Happily, Bourne has tightened up his writing and toned down the feverish pace and purple prose of his earlier work. (Dec.)