The Paris Architect

By Charles Belfoure, the setting is WWII occupied Paris. Architect Lucien Bernard doesn’t really care about what’s happening to the French Jews when he is asked by a wealthy French industrialist to design hiding places for them in homes he owns until they can be smuggled to freedom. He knows it’s dangerous but he needs the work. Soon he is designing war plants for the Germans AND more hiding places. His wife leaves him, calling him a traitor. His feelings shift through circumstances that are a little formulaic. He’s given a Jewish orphan to protect and he makes a good friend of the German officer who has given him the industrial work. This man helps him to escape to Switzerland with his lover and the two children she has taken in. So it makes for a tidy ending. Not terrifically original writing but it does raise questions on what will  influence a person to change.