(He was Himmler's right-hand man, and the title refers to a piece of ponderous Nazi waggishness: Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich – Himmler's brain is called Heydrich). But Heydrich's icily demonic character necessarily dominates the book, and his pivotal roles in the key atrocities of the era, from Kristallnacht to the final solution itself, take up a substantial part of the narrative.

It's about his assassination, specifically, and the undersung Czech resistance heroes who carried it out an angle that licenses a certain jauntiness in the tone. Whether you find it something more than that will depend on how you feel about the application of breezy charm and amusingly anguished authorial self-reflexiveness to a book about the Nazi security chief Reinhard Heydrich, who must be one of the most unfunny figures in recorded history. A breezily charming novel, with a thrilling story that also happens to be true, by a gifted young author amusingly anguished over the question of how to tell it … In principle there's nothing not to like about Laurent Binet's acclaimed debut, and HHhH is certainly a thoroughly captivating performance.

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