The Gendarme.

• Author: Tucker, David G.

The Gendarme

By Mark Mustian

The Gendarme by Mark Mustian is not a typical lawyer-authored novel. It is not a courtroom drama written by a courtroom lawyer where the good and the evil are neon-lit, and the plot hinges on the improbable misstep of a witness. The Gendarme is the memoir of a war criminal.

Emmett Conn has made a good life for himself in America. Old and widowed, his daughters are grown, and he is a Rotarian in south Georgia. But Conn has a past not typical of those pursuing the American dream. Memories of this past had been lost to him, but an advancing brain tumor starts restoring his memories bit by horrifying bit. Conn had been Ahmet Khan, a Turkish paramilitary gendarme in command of a caravan of Armenian deportees headed to Syria during the Turkish genocide of the Armenians.

Conn's life is reminiscent of lesser Nazi war criminals that made lives for themselves elsewhere, like John Demjanjuk, the Ohio autoworker who turned out to have been a concentration camp guard. Unlike Demjanjuk, Conn could not have been aware he had committed deeds that would qualify him as a war criminal. Conn's growing awareness of his past confronts him with a deep moral quandary in the twilight of his life. How does he deal with what he has learned about himself as a young man?

Conn's family and friends urge him to "move on" and let the past be. Conn, however, yearns for the truth, whatever the truth may be, particularly as it relates to Araxie, a young Armenian woman in the caravan. How Conn manages this conflict is the climax of the novel.

The conflict, of course, is not limited to Conn. The issues of long past war crimes or human rights violations coming to light are no longer novel. Whether through prosecuting long ago murders of civil rights leaders in America or through reconciliation...