History is a burning issue

TO KILL The Truth latest in Sam Bourne’s series featuring heroine Maggie Costello (Quercus, £12.99) — is far from perfect but it speaks to its time in a way few read-in-a-singlesitting Dan Brown-esque thrillers do.

Shoah survivors are dying in mysterious circumstances. Someone is burning down the world’s leading libraries, one by one, expunging their digital archives and depriving the world of more history each time.

Ex-White House aide Costello alerts the FBI and the world’s governments but none seems to know how or why it is happening. At the same time, a man is suing a historian for calling him a “slavery denier” and uses the trial as a platform to claim that one of the darkest parts of American history is a myth. Every lost library brings him closer to seeming right.

The book explores how and what we remember are conscious choices that define us. It’s exactly the sort of novel you’d expect a journalist (Sam Bourne is the pseudonym of Guardian and JC columnist Jonathan Freedland) to write, when millions swallow fake news and the powerful deny what everyone can see with their own eyes.

One of the things that distinguishes this from Brown’s arcane novels is the idea driving it. The prospect of the world forgetting its past is something anyone can relate to —but if you prefer to read about 1,000-year-old secret societies, jog on with Dan Brown.

To Kill The Truth does have some of Brown’s faults. Exposition is often clunky. The transcript of TV news reporting the British Library going up in smoke runs to more than a page. I don’t share the author’s view that antique books are self-evidently the stuff of high drama. I stifled a laugh when the heroine is told to go to the University of Virginia’s archive “RIGHT NOW!”.

As Maggie Costello runs around universities and government institutions, she is helped by an old flame, bringing back memories of their time together. She becomes the target of a fabricated sex tape and an avalanche of fake emails released in her name.

Involved in the book’s themes is an unnamed American president, who seems to be based exclusively on Donald Trump. At one point, he broadcasts the hunt for the library burner, hoping for good ratings. It is a reminder of how the real president is just a showman whose bid for the White House was based on entertainment and untruths.

Those have been hard to fight. Truth is a fragile thing, even with the world’s libraries still standing.

JACK SOMMERS