Get The Red Rooster Constructed By Michael Wallace Contained In Copy
really liked this book much more than I thought I would, I love The Righteous Series by Michael Wallace but this was a completely different subject, This is about World War II and that subject is pretty much hit
or miss with me, This was a hit. I really liked the characters in this book and it reminded me of Wolf's Hour by Robert McCammon without, of course, the werewolf, There is a lot of action and excitement and is a very good read, I highly recommend this book,
The Red Rooster is a bar in Paris and also a French gold coin, much to be desired in occupied Paris during World War II, Gabriela Reyes is a young Spanish girl who came to Paris with her father, an artist, who has been imprisoned by the Gestapo, She vows to free him, She goes from poor to penniless, to homeless before coming to the Red Rooster where she becomes a hostess and then a whore, Enter Colonel Hoekman, a Gestapo colonel and Helmut von Cratz, a civilian industrialist and profiteer who both frequent the bar,
The plot revolves around Helmut Von Cratz' smuggling stolen French gold to the port of Marseille, for some purpose to be discovered, and Colonel Hoekman's malevolent snooping.
There is lots of action toward the end, I enjoyed the setting of Paris occupied by the Germans and how the French were forced to accomodate, But, I think Wallace missed the ball on the financial plot, We are told Helmut is rich, and there are several situations where his money and power are used to advance the story, but no explanation of how he is so rich and has such useful connections.
That should have been the story,
I read it to the finish and enjoyed the setting and the small characters and stories, which Wallace does well, I take off because he wrote a financial thriller with no finance, This was one I could not stick with, I had to force myself to go back to, However, I can't really figure out why there is no particular reason I can cite as to why I couldn't engage with this espionage tale, I'll give it a while, perhaps go back and reread it when I'm not distracted by other things and then I'll amend this review, I enjoyed this book, and the plot, but at times it was a stretch to believe, But it is a thriller, and kept the action moving, What I liked most is that the many in the french resistance were lone wolves, They were not well connected, but individuals with very personal reasons for their sacrifice, In that sense, he nailed it with this character, Loved, Loved, Loved this book! This book was a real pageturner for me once I got past the first chapters, I have to admit that I do not know a whole lot about WW II history, It sounded like the French were collaborating with the Germans and I didn't understand that at first, But then things were explained and I realized other things, Once I got into it, I could not put it down, I read it on my kindle in something likedays even though I work full time, It was fastpaced with a storyline that was just complex enough without making me have to work too hard, There was a lot of tension and some torture but it was not enough to really sicken me,
I love historical novels, I always hated history in school because it was so dry and boring with so many dates and places to memorize, So historical novels give a view into how actual people may have experienced the events and how nuanced things were, The Red Rooster helped me realize how torn people could have been given the choices before them and the kinds of things they had to do, and associations they had to make in order to survive, or not.
Nothing is ever just black and white, There were so many different factions operating all with their own agendas whereas I grew up with the idea that historical events were pretty straightforward, I'm enjoying the richness, neverending material, and subtleties exposed in such a historical novel as The Red Rooster, The Red Rooster is a special valuable coin chased after by many and amassed by some during WWII, As the cover image of the book suggests, the story line unfolds in German occupied Paris, Mr. Wallace's book is not so much a thriller, as it is an account of how profoundly war affects people of all walks of life and how the subsequent suffering takes on different shapes and forms.
The main character Gabriela looses her mother, Her father is taken prisoner by the Gestapo and subjected to invasive medical experiments that leave him brain damaged, Gabriela, like so many, citizens at that time is experiencing extreme poverty and starvation due to tightly rationed resources, The war machine is hungry and has to be fed at all cost, While Gabriela tries to resist it, she too eventually becomes a prostitute to stay alive, Others just die of malnutrition and sheer cold inside their own houses, Yet others find ways to collaborate with military interests in order to avoid disaster, Somewhere in all this suffering a romance almost blooms but only 'almost', The The Red Rooster's end is rather sad, but then, so was this entire time period, marked by individuals trying to survive in their own ways, No. Just no. I did not really enjoy this book at all and I normally love WWII era, historical fiction, The character development was practically nonexistant, so there was no reason for me to like or care about them, I completed it hoping it would get better, but it never did, I'm glad I only paid,for it. I just finished this book yesterday, I have mixed feelings about suggesting this one to others, I love WWII books so I was excited to read the summary, The boook was a slow start and sad because the heroine Gabriela decides to sleep with a Nazi soldier to fight off hunger, Although this may be plausible when you consider the effects war has, she also decides to seduce the Nazi SS soldier who took her fatheryears ago, The book didn't really get going till more than half way through and Gabriela and Helmut a German business man wokring against the Nazis are not easy to like.
Once the real story started I did want to finish the book, Sadly the ending was not very good either, but in all honesty it was true to the characters' lives,.stars
I rather enjoyed the first/of this book, but it bogged way down after .
I listened on audiobook for another hour or so, then just put it away, I may skim the last few pages later to see where everybody ended up but it's not a burning desire for me, The story is a fairly small, personal one that doesn't have any major implications, There is a sideplot about swaying the outcome of the war a bit, but it wasn't very well fleshed out, Just some talk about having enough money to pay people off and keeping secrets as far as I could recollect, anyway,
I rounded up my review tobecause it is very well written and engaging for the majority of the runtime, Also, if you have the chance to get the audiobook, the narrator does a remarkable job with the French and German accents, She maintains them throughout the entire runtime, yet is very clear and easy to understand, .