Forest of Souls by
Carla Banks
hbk out March 05
Published by HarperCollins
at £17.99
This is Carla Banks first novel, and is a self-assured piece of work. But then it
would appear that Carla Banks is also Danuta Reah, who herself is a master of
psychological suspense. Forest of Souls, however, should be seen as a first novel as it
intimately unfolds themes close to Carla Banks' own life. Growing up in a scholarly
family, her father was an East-European cavalry officer who came to the UK as a
wartime refugee. He told his children stories of his childhood in a country destroyed
by the war. The consequences of the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe reverberate
through this novel.
Helen Kovacs has married Daniel, whose grandparents were Lithuanian, and
she is determined to find out about her children's ancestry. She abandons her failing
marriage and is in the process of examining an archive for information, when she pays
for what she has uncovered with her life. Her lifelong friend, Faith Lange, is now her
academic supervisor at the Centre for European Studies at the University of
Manchester. And it is Faith who must piece together the history that has resulted in
Helen's murder. Faith's own family are from Poland, and her grandfather, Marek, is
being interviewed by journalist Jake Denbigh. Jake is writing an article on refugees
and immigrants, and how they integrate into Britain. His own curiosity about Eastern
Europe has been piqued by the meeting Juris Ziverts, a Latvian accused of war
crimes. His main source of information about atrocities in Europe, and particularly
Minsk, is the elderly Sophia Yevanova, mother of historian Antoni Yevanov, director
of the Centre Faith and Helen work for. Jake and Faith join forces eventually to
journey down a road that leads to Belarus and the Kurapaty Forest, and to the heart of
several families with secrets to hide.
Carla Banks obviously draws on her own experiences as an academic to create
an atmosphere where allegiances can shift, and meticulous research can uncover
uncomfortable truths. The revealing of the various pieces of the puzzle is deftly
handled, and the threads of half-truths and possibilities lead down many a blind alley.
Is grandfather Marek not Polish after all? And could he be involved in the horrors of
mass exterminations? What has Antoni to hide? And how could Nicholas Garrick,
renegade son of an English right-wing fascist father possibly be accused of Helen's
murder? Banks intersperses her story with a series of apparent Russian folk tales that
gradually begin to point at unpleasant truths. The ultimate dilemma is not so much
the murder of Helen, but the wider question of how it is possible to condemn any
actions taken when the atrocities perpetrated on nations by Stalin were so horrific that
the Nazi invasion was seen as a liberation. Carla Banks serves up a haunting murder
mystery that transcends the genre to set us thinking about the human condition.
NB: For an added frisson of life imitating art, go to www.carlabanks.co.uk and
look at Jake Denbigh's weblog.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
Forest of Souls by
Carla Banks
