First published by Random House in 1964, it is set in France and Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, as seen through the eyes of a beautiful, rich Parisian Jew and her beloved husband, an old-fashioned Prussian army general.

All of Condon's earlier books were replete with unexpected moments of violence and gratuitous death but none can compare with An Infinity of Mirrors' account of mass murder.

The term "Holocaust" is not used in the book, as it was far less common in 1964, but Condon gives the reader an extremely grim picture of its origins and some of the practical details involved in its bureaucratic, yet evil, execution.

Condon's impetus for writing An Infinity of Mirrors is laid out in an excerpt from a letter from him that takes up the entire back dust cover of the first American edition.

In it he writes: The story of Hitler's nihilism—destruction for the sake of destruction—and the incongruity of Nazis occupying Paris—the Beast in the city of Beauty, as it were—have attracted me since the end of World War II.... What I wanted to say was that when evil confronts us in any form, it is not enough to flee it or to pretend that it is happening to somebody else.

Because Mr. Condon possesses a diverting style (he is best known for his ring-a-ding The Manchurian Candidate), these keys offer admission to a kind of Playboy Club in which all the entertainment is in the Grand Guignol manner.

[3] The title, as is the case in six of Condon's first seven books, is derived from a fictitious Keener's Manual mentioned in many of his earlier novels: "God surrounded me with an infinity of mirrors which repeat my image again and again and again."