A Marvelously Creepy New Novel

SIX YEARS AGO, the British writer Carmen Callil published a remarkable book called Bad Faith, in which she investigated the life of the man in charge of deporting Jews from Vichy France. Callil’s interest in Louis Darquier de Pellepoix was sparked when she caught a glimpse of him in Marcel Ophuls’s documentary The Sorrow and the Pity and realized to her shock that she was obliquely connected to him. For seven years, Callil had worked with a therapist named Anne Darquier—who she now learned was the estranged daughter of the war criminal—until Anne committed suicide by mixing alcohol and pills. Suddenly Callil realized that the woman she trusted to help her with her demons was living with world-historical demons of her own. What must it be like to be a healer who was the daughter of a mass killer?