Hogg, Peter 1962-

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Hogg, Peter 1962-

PERSONAL:

Born 1962, in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Canada.

CAREER:

Writer, attorney. Served as a criminal prosecutor, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Department of Justice, War Crimes Unit, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 1993-95.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Chapters/Robertson Davies Prize for first-time Canadian novelists, 1999, for Crimes of War.

WRITINGS:

Crimes of War, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS:

Peter Hogg was born in 1962 in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. A writer and an attorney, Hogg began his career serving as a criminal prosecutor in Vancouver, British Columbia. From there he moved on to the Canadian Department of Justice, War Crimes Unit, in Ottawa. He was always interested in writing, however, and when he moved to Ottawa, he began using his spare time to craft stories. He thought of the activity primarily as a hobby, but then he entered his partial manuscript of Crimes of War in the first (and ultimately the only) Chapters competition and was named a finalist. The contest required him to finish the book within months, and so he pushed himself to meet their deadline. His tenacity paid off, as he won the Chapters/Robertson Davies Prize for first-time Canadian novelists. His success, followed by publication, inspired him to keep working at his craft.

Crimes of War intertwines two stories, going back and forth between the battles of World War II and the machinations of the Special Prosecutions Unit (SPU) in Ottawa. Friedrich Reile, now a war criminal living in Ottawa, recalls his experiences during the war, first suffering German occupation as a child in Russia, and later as an SS officer in the Ukraine carrying out his gruesome orders during the Holocaust. His story is played against that of Dennis Connor, who works as an historian for SPU, as they attempt to locate any war criminals who are hiding from justice in Canada and bring them to trial. Although Connor is aware of Reile, and his guilt, he is also caught up in the bureaucratic nightmare of working for a department that has been chasing down dead-end leads for half a century. Hogg depicts both men as real human beings; Reile is not pure evil, and Connor is not perfect. Hogg clearly mines his own experiences working for the War Crimes Unit to steep his writing in verisimilitude. A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote: "Connor's largely ineffectual stabs at action make him a disappointing hero, but the novel's real drama resides in the morality tale he uncovers." John Wilson, reviewing for Quill & Quire, remarked that "Hogg's writing is vivid and leaps startlingly from humorous Ottawa chit-chat to the gas vans of the Einsatzgruppen (killing squads)." Booklist contributor David Pitt praised Hogg's realism and detailed writing, calling Crimes of War "a very moving novel, full of moral ambiguity." Pitt noted further that the work should be especially interesting to people who enjoy reading "literature about World War II." A.J. Anderson, writing for Library Journal, noted that "Hogg shrewdly lays bare the inner torments and frustrations of both men."