Blood from a Stone

What looks, at first, like a different kind of Holocaust tale--in which an Israeli journalist spends 11 years (1988-1999) searching for diamonds buried in a World War II foxhole in France--quickly reveals itself as a would-be Hollywood thriller, replete with cursed jewels, American heroism, biblical morality and more climactic moments than a Spielberg tear-jerker. The story of the rough, uncut diamonds that offered Eastern European Jews purchasing power and hope of escape from Nazi persecution gets buried beneath co-author Svoray's own tale (which is told in the third person) about his obsessive quest for the diamonds and for personal wealth. The authors (Hammer is an Edgar winner) rely heavily on novelistic devices--dramatic pauses, meaningful glances and stylized dialogue--that can make the narrative read more like uninspired genre fiction than any sort of history. Th story starts, stops and restarts (and sometimes repeats itself); tangential anecdotes, such as Svoray's horror at a Neo-Nazi snuff film, break up the flow; and breathless prose (""The curse was a black cloud, or perhaps a red one filled with blood, that rained down disaster on anyone who thought of the stones as his"") can deflate tension instead of increasing it. For readers interested in a real-life treasure hunt, this volume will appeal; those desirous of a thoughtful, annotated historical document will want to look elsewhere.