A gripping and densely packed thriller dramatizing the Allied Italian campaign.
A sprawling historical novel examines the occupation and liberation of Rome during World War II.
This second book in Marquis’ (Bodyguard of Deception, 2016, etc.) trilogy focusing on some of the major events of World War II concentrates on the Nazi occupation of Rome from 1943 to 1944 and the liberation of the Eternal City by the Allies in June 1944. Like its predecessor, the work creates a broad-canvas narrative by weaving together a handful of separate storylines, in this case chiefly those of an American soldier, an Italian freedom fighter, a German colonel, and the pope himself. The pontiff in question is that controversial, so-called “Hitler’s pope” Pius XII, here portrayed with refreshing complexity as a man of fluid principles caught between an array of much stronger forces (“the thought of taking Hitler” publicly to task “in a high-stakes manner made him feel older than his sixty-six years”). U.S. Special Services operative John Bridger is a fairly standard-issue action hero whom Marquis nonetheless manages to imbue with some nuance, and the author is likewise successful in giving Italian Resistance fighter Teresa Di Domenico more personality than her central-casting role necessarily warrants. But the book’s standout character is SS Col. Wilhelm Hollmann, “the furthest thing from a rabid Nazi.” The shrewdly drawn portrait depicts a complicated German whose patriotism clashes frequently with his duties. Hollmann, who feels “no animosity whatsoever towards the Jews,” lambastes a Gestapo chief for extorting gold from Rome’s Jewish community (“Despite the fact that they paid your fiendish ransom, the Jews are still going to be sent off to their deaths”). Marquis brings these main characters and a host of minor ones together in a propulsive, fast-paced story that ranges from the battlefields in the struggle to wrest Rome from Nazi forces to the delicate, behind-the-scenes maneuverings conducted by the pope to placate the Germans long enough to give Vatican-sponsored efforts to unseat Hitler a chance to come to fruition. Marquis has a deft ear for dialogue and a very skillful hand at pacing, particularly when narrating military action sequences. The panoramic impression of his multiple character arcs is reminiscent of Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War in the way they put human faces on the era’s history.
A gripping and densely packed thriller dramatizing the Allied Italian campaign.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943593-03-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Mount Sopris Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The previous books of this author (Devil of a State, 1962; The Right to an Answer, 1961) had valid points of satire, some humor, and a contemporary view, but here the picture is all out—from a time in the future to an argot that makes such demands on the reader that no one could care less after the first two pages.
If anyone geta beyond that—this is the first person story of Alex, a teen-age hoodlum, who, in step with his times, viddies himself and the world around him without a care for law, decency, honesty; whose autobiographical language has droogies to follow his orders, wallow in his hate and murder moods, accents the vonof human hole products. Betrayed by his dictatorial demands by a policing of his violence, he is committed when an old lady dies after an attack; he kills again in prison; he submits to a new method that will destroy his criminal impulses; blameless, he is returned to a world that visits immediate retribution on him; he is, when an accidental propulsion to death does not destroy him, foisted upon society once more in his original state of sin.
What happens to Alex is terrible but it is worse for the reader.
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 1962
ISBN: 0393928098
Page Count: 357
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1962
SEEN & HEARD
Despite getting a little preachy toward the end, Leary has largely achieved a genuinely funny novel about alcoholism.
A supposedly recovering alcoholic real estate agent tells her not-exactly-trustworthy version of life in her small New England town in this tragicomic novel by Leary (Outtakes from a Marriage, 2008, etc.).
Sixty-year-old Hildy Good, a divorced realtor who has lived all her life in Wendover on the Massachusetts North Shore, proudly points to having an ancestor burned at the stake at the Salem witch trials. In fact, her party trick is to do psychic readings using subtle suggestions and observational skills honed by selling homes. At first, the novel seems to center on Hildy’s insights about her Wendover neighbors, particularly her recent client Rebecca McAllister, a high-strung young woman who has moved into a local mansion with her businessman husband and two adopted sons. Hildy witnesses Rebecca having trouble fitting in with other mothers, visiting the local psychiatrist Peter Newbold, who rents an office above Hildy’s, and winning a local horse show on her expensive new mount. Hildy is acerbically funny and insightful about her neighbors; many, like her, are from old families whose wealth has evaporated. She becomes Rebecca’s confidante about the affair Rebecca is having with Peter, whom Hildy helped baby-sit when he was a lonely child. She helps another family who needs to sell their house to afford schooling for their special needs child. She begins an affair with local handyman Frankie Getchell, with whom she had a torrid romance as a teenager. But Hildy, who has recently spent a stint in rehab and joined AA after an intervention by her grown daughters, is not quite the jolly eccentric she appears. There are those glasses of wine she drinks alone at night, those morning headaches and memory lapses that are increasing in frequency. As both Rebecca’s and Hildy’s lives spin out of control, the tone darkens until it approaches tragedy. Throughout, Hildy is original, irresistibly likable and thoroughly untrustworthy.
Despite getting a little preachy toward the end, Leary has largely achieved a genuinely funny novel about alcoholism.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-01554-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
