My rating: 3 of 5 stars
QB VII is a book about a court case between a highly respected Polish Doctor Sir Adam Kelno who had been knighted for his work in medical research and the best selling writer Abraham Cady who has written a book about the Holocaust and has named Dr Kelno as a war criminal who had someone who performed special operations on people in the Jadwiga concentration camp during the Second World War where he was first incarcerated and then forced to work as a prisoner/doctor during his time there.
The book is divided into four parts. The first part introduces the character of Adam Kelno and tells of his life up to the court case; the second part tells the story of Cady from his beginnings right up until his book about the Holocaust was published and he heard that he was being taken to court for damages; the third part of the novel dealt with the case initially being thrashed out between each of the parties lawyers and the fourth and final part was the trial itself.
Although the first two parts were quite interesting as they introduced the characters and gave the background to the whole story they just weren’t as interesting as the final two parts which dealt with the judicial system and told the true story of what went on during the war at the Jadwiga concentration camp which was truly awful and horrific and really made you change your opinions that you might have held before about the characters from the earlier part of the book.
I wasn’t too sure if I would like this book, and it did start of a bit slow at first, but the last half of the book was compelling and towards the end I found it difficult to put down until I had found out the outcome of the trial and learnt the real truth about what had happened in the concentration camp all those years ago.
I remember watching the television mini-series in the early 80s. Ben Gazzara starred in it and I recall it being very good.
I never knew that there was tv version of it. I will have to look for it one day