Inheritance of Secrets by Sonya Bates

​      The past awakens and murders in this novel. Its victims are a lovely elderly couple, first generation immigrants to Australia who have built a nice life for themselves there for five decades, settling there after the Second World War.
       It wasn’t easy then at first, not coming from a country responsible for so much tragedy and devastation, but Karl Weiss had managed, he was never a Nazi technically, he was merely a soldier. Ideologically, he wasn’t committed and the rest can be dismissed as semantics. But it wasn’t that way for some of his compatriots, not then and not now.
       There are those intended to preserve the ugly and dangerous ideology and they recognize no statutes of limitations.
       And so in 2009 a young woman finds herself entangled in the twisted webs of NeoNazis as she tries to solve the murder of her beloved grandparents, with assistance of her oft disappearing sister and a potentially loyalty conflicted reporter friend. And yes, technically the cops are involved also, but this is very much a family matter and as such it ought to be solved by the family.
       The story intrigued me with the Nazi angle, most if not all WWII stories are very compelling by nature, the great battle of good and evil has seldom had a more perfect stage to play out upon and thus creates for the most exceptional dynamics and dramatics. I’m also partial to a good immigrant experience story. And historical fiction. And thrillers. And murder mysteries. So really, there was a lot of attractors here.
      Exectuion wise, it was pretty decent. There’s something quite plain and flat about the writing, maybe a debut thing, maybe a remnant of the author’s children’s books writing time, but overall it worked decently enough and made for a pretty good read. Thanks Netgalley.