The Glass Pearls (Faber Editions)

This sinister tale of an ex-Nazi surgeon hiding in plain sight in 1960s London by the celebrated filmmaker is a forgotten feat of Hitchcockian noir. Nothing is more inviting to disclose your secrets than to be told by others of their own ... London June 1965. Karl Braun arrives as a lodger in Pimlico: hatless with a bow-tie greying hair slight in build. His new neighbours are intrigued by this cultured German gentleman who works as a piano tuner; many are fellow émigrés who assume that he like them came to England to flee Hitler. That summer Braun courts a woman attends classical concerts buys bacon dances the twist. But as the newspapers fill with reports of the hunt for Nazi war criminals his nightmares become increasingly worse …