The Ghosts of Rome

The pulse-pounding second volume in O’Connor’s Roman Escape Line trilogy (after My Father’s House) follows Vatican monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and his co-conspirators, known as the Choir, as they help Allied soldiers and Jews escape Nazi-occupied Rome in 1944. Gestapo commander Paul Hauptmann is bent on breaking up the group—his wife and two children are being held hostage in Germany by Heinrich Himmler until he hunts down and captures the Choir’s members, including Contessa Giovanna “Jo” Landini. The plot heats up when two escaped POWs and a wounded Polish pilot are trapped in Rome. The youngest Choir member, 19-year-old Blon Kiernan, risks her life to find a sympathetic doctor to operate on the Pole before he dies. Then, in a tense extended sequence, Jo and the Choir try to spirit the three escapees to safety right under Hauptmann’s nose. The suspenseful 1944 chapters are interspersed with snippets of BBC interviews with former Choir members in the 1960s and an unpublished memoir by Jo, which provide a layered historical perspective (“In those weeks, I saw many a strange and haunting sight, but none stranger than the starlit life many of the escapees made for themselves among the Eternal City’s rooftops,” the Contessa writes). O’Connor captivates with his vigorous portrayal of wartime Rome. (Feb.)