Review of "HHhH" by Laurent Binet

This has sat on my bookshelf for six years. My lovely parents-in-law bought it for my birthday in 2014, which I know because there was a little note in it. I had avoided reading it because it never felt like a good time to read another book about the Nazis. I started it now because I found out that it was specifically about the assassination of Heydrich, and because I'd become friends with the lovely Dave Kaspar, whose father was the Czech intelligence officer who planned the operation. As a consequence I watched one of the films about the assassination, The Man With The Iron Heart, and I wanted to see how this book treated it.

It's made more interesting because it's as much about Laurent Binet's experience of writing it, and about the genre of historical fiction in general - how much should the author describe events and thoughts that they couldn't possibly know about in order to create dramatic effect or versmillitude? What should be done about historical uncertainties - like was Heydrich's Mercedes black or dark green?

Anyway, it turned out to be a well-written and compelling book, though I didn't much like reading it last thing at night. It chimed well with the film, perhaps because the author has obviously seen it and all the others. It didn't give much time to some of the unexplained aspects of the historical event - like, why was this the one and only time that any European resistance group assassinated a high-ranking Nazi? Was it generally policy not to do that because of the extent of the reprisals that would follow, or was it just too hard usually, and Heydrich's arrogance made it possible only here? Is there any substance to the suggestion that Churchill needed Heydrich killed because he was about to move against his intelligence rival Canaris (who is mentioned a lot in the book) because the latter was actually a British asset (which isn't suggested in the book).

Strongly recommended anyway.