One of the insiders of Vichy France

Perhaps somewhat unprofessionally, Anne had let slip to Callil some details about her own unhappy life. It was enough to intrigue Callil, although at that point she could not possibly have envisioned the full picture her book provides.

It's not easy for the reader to absorb, either. And yet, the book's length notwithstanding, the stories – the tangled personal histories of Louis, Myrtle, and Anne as well as the equally complex history of France in the 1930s and 1940s – will keep readers gripped from beginning to end.

The "facts" alone are compelling enough, but it's the deft way Callil has assembled them that works so well. Divided into five key parts, the book begins with the family histories and childhoods of both Louis and Myrtle. Part 2 details the beginning of the Darquiers' marriage and Anne's birth and babyhood.

The next section, titled "Hitler's Parrot," takes us to France in the 1930s and traces Louis Darquier's growing prominence as a French anti-Semite, while repeatedly reminding us of his daughter growing up in an England "hiccup[ing] towards another world war."

Part 4 covers the 1940-44 period, including Louis's CGQJ activities. In the book's last segment, Callil follows Louis, Myrtle, and Anne after the war.

Blending these personal and public stories, Callil offers an unparalleled window into Louis Darquier and the extraordinary confluence of historical circumstances and personal character (or, more accurately, lack of character) that allowed this small man – a barroom brawler who battered and his wife and cheated on her; who only irregularly and incompletely paid the woman hired to care for the child he had abandoned; and who claimed that "Germany has simply been the first country in the modern era to provide a governmental solution to the [Jewish] problem ... the French government [must] do the same" – to obtain a big title. Ultimately, Darquier irritated even the Germans who'd promoted him; he never had many fans among the French at Vichy.

Unfortunately, after so painstakingly researching and portraying Darquier – as well as the French regime in which he lived and worked – Callil concludes her book with a two-sentence indictment of "the Jews of Israel": "What caused me anguish as I tracked down Louis Darquier was to live so closely to the helpless terror of the Jews of France, and to see what the Jews of Israel were passing on to the Palestinian people. Like the rest of humanity, the Jews of Israel 'forget' the Palestinians."

It left this reader hoping that others impressed by Callil's thoroughness in telling one complex story will remember the value of a complete record when addressing other complicated subjects as well.

• Erika Dreifus holds a PhD in modern French history from Harvard University.

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