Instead of try­ing to track the char­ac­ters with an impro­vised dia­gram of numer­ous criss­cross­ing arrows, Bas­comb pro­vides a schema before the book begins. You can’t pos­si­bly fol­low the sto­ry with­out one. Where else does one read a sto­ry with 38 char­ac­ters? This is prob­a­bly the third book I have read about the remark­able cap­ture of Eich­mann and, with­out a doubt, it is the most under­standable, there­fore the most inter­est­ing. Eichmann’s zeal for blood and effi­cien­cy is revealed in the first chap­ter. Let them arrive at the camps by reg­u­lar rail­roads in their fine coats, the ladies in their high heels; they will all die any­way. Mur­der­ing Hungary’s Jews will be Eichmann’s finest achieve­ment and no one could stop him, even though he has been told to let up as Ger­many is los­ing the war and maybe some bar­gain­ing should be con­sid­ered. Soon enough, Eich­mann, him­self, is on the run, prob­a­bly sat­is­fied that he com­plet­ed his job. He deserts his Ger­man hench­men to squir­rel out in Argenti­na. Odd­ly enough, unlike the oth­er big-name Nazis, he has no for­tune stashed away and so in Argenti­na he is forced to take a menial job. It is fit­ting that this most menial man who once hav­ing had his time of glo­ry doesn’t seem to mourn his lack of wealth as long as he has his fam­i­ly around him. And here is the irony—it is when the half-Jew­ish girl­friend of Eichmann’s old­est son invites him to din­ner and her Jew­ish father detects some­thing, that the cha­rade col­laps­es and the hunt begins! Could Hol­ly­wood beat that? Every moment of this book is excit­ing. Eichmann’s tri­al her­ald­ed a whole new era of Holo­caust stud­ies. No longer did sur­vivors of the Holo­caust in Israel have to pre­tend that it had nev­er hap­pened. They were free to talk about it, to apply for claims and to write about it. Fur­ther­more, the hunt for Nazis, instead of dimin­ish­ing, con­tin­ued and does to this day even though the per­pe­tra­tors are com­ing to the courts on stretch­ers. By the way, the design of this book is brilliant!