The Human Pool

An epic and hauntingly topical geopolitical thriller spanning six decades and three continents The Human Pool confirms the journalist and award-winning filmmaker Chris Petit as the heir to John le Carré and Robert Harris.. THE HUMAN POOL. Rumors about Willi Schmidts actions during the Second World War were enigmatic to say the least. He worked for U.S. Intelligence out of Switzerland; he cut black-market deals on the side; he rescued scores of Jews from the Nazis. Saint or sinner? Either way Schmidt was strictly murky waters -- and reports of his death in 1945 surprised no one. . Sixty years later Joe Hoover is convinced Schmidt is still alive armed with a false name and a fortune in pharmaceuticals. For years Hoover former Intelligence courier for the American spymaster Allen Dulles has been haunted by misgivings about his own wartime role in his bosss top-secret financial partnership with the Third Reich. Now someone wants Hoover dead. . Back in Europe Hoover discovers that operations he thought had ended long ago are still being played out. Forming an uneasy alliance with Vaughan an undercover journalist investigating neo-Nazi traffic of Kurdish refugees he begins to unravel a conspiracy that leads deep into his past to his days mixing with Nazi officers in the supposedly neutral cities of Zurich Istanbul and Budapest where enemies did deals over cocktails. . At each step Hoover finds the shadow of Willi Schmidt and the specter of World War IIs most grotesque and enduring legacy -- a trade in people: the human pool.. Set against a vivid historical backdrop The Human Pool mixes fiction and fact to explosive effect. Chris Petit has crafted his finest novel yet -- a cosmopolitan thinking-persons thriller that turns the world inside out and traces its veins: It spells nothing less than the rebirth of the great espionage novel.