The Ghosts Of Rome (Rome Escape Line, 2)
This novel, a follow up to Irish novelist O’Connor’s My Father’s House, is inspired by the true exploits of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, the Oskar Schindler of Rome. O’Flaherty, safe within the Vatican, worked with a clandestine group called ‘the choir’ to hide and smuggle over 6,500 Jews, Allied soldiers and POWs to safety during the 1944 Nazi occupation of Rome using the Rome Escape Line. A third novel is to complete the trilogy.
Vibrant fictional Contessa Giovanna Landini, Jo, takes center stage this time. A widow in her thirties risking her life to help escapees, she is said to drift around St. Peter’s Square every morning, nine to noon wearing a long black coat and a black lace mantilla. The story begins with a devastating air raid, then jumps ahead to popular singer Delia Kiernan’s 1963 transcript on the many dangers: bombs, food/medical shortages, tanks, Nazi retribution, close quarters, and thinning tempers.
The author’s device using a mosaic of narrators and switching from first to third person, possibly intending to create a more textured read, proves confusing. Notes at the back outlining the actual historical characters would have been helpful. The writing is dense with little action except for a gripping scene between the Contessa and Gestapo leader Paul Hauptmann, who has commandeered her palazzo, and the climax transporting the wounded Polish airman to safety under the nose of the Gestapo.
Perhaps the addition of a romance would have helped drive the action and involve the reader? Had I not been reviewing this novel, I would have given up partway. It required effort to continue reading.
