Historical- thrillery-factual fiction

Recently, Adam Mars Jones accused me in the Observer of being in some ways worse than Hitler, because at least Hitler had an excuse for idolising the German upper classes, namely race science, which I didn’t. I was outraged, and seriously considered suing him. I have since calmed down a little and see now that novels set in the recent past are particularly prone to judgments which are more about the history than the fiction, and sometimes even confuse the author with the fictional voice.  This was the point Allan Massie made so eloquently in these pages a few weeks ago.      

Dancing with Eva raises some of these questions. It is based on the account of the last days of the Hitler bunker given by Traudl Junge, Hitler’s secretary; Alan Judd insinuates into the story an account of a fictional secretary to Eva Braun, Edith Ashburnham, long since married to a British officer, now dead, and settled into her husband’s house in the shires with her housekeeper, Mrs Hoath. Her rural peace is disturbed by another survivor of the Führer Bunker, Hans Beck. Hans’s motives are clearly sinister. 

The technical problem with what is in many ways a well-written novel is that right from the start, Alan Judd undercuts his enterprise: Edith divulges that there is a dark secret involving her and Hans, but not the nature of it, which is absurd, because hers is the voice of the narrative. Why, in her account, would she hold back information that is so vital when she discourses freely on everything else, her late husband William, her son Michael and his family, her life in the bunker with Eva and so on? The answer, of course, is that we are in for a revelation or two right at the end of the narrative.