One of the comments made at our meeting was that the reader had learned more reading this book than she had reading any one book for a long time. I found the allegorical style to be compelling. Not having any clear answers or the typical battle of white and black hats was refreshing. You could talk about the characters without resorting to saying he was bad or good, they were multidimensional. The mixture of fictional characters acting with the historical characters helped to bring the historical characters to life and suggested their motivations.

Scherm\\\\\\\'s portrayal of two social misfits and their attempts to enter the world of what they saw as the privileged classes results in imprisonment and betrayal. The dark mood of this story is relentless. The characters are well drawn and the moral questions are complex.

This book, although a quick read and deceptively non-eventful, caused more discussion in our book group than any book before. We loved discussing the choices made by the author and meaning of the various characters and interactions!