Spellbinding multi-layered crime novel set in a fascinating period & place. Set in the first months of 1944, Rome is declared an `open city` as the Allies steadily get closer. The German occupying forces know their days are numbered & yet the SS, the Gestapo & the Army desperately vie for power. The partisans attack the fascists & the Germans, triggering mass-murder retaliation. Controversially, the hero is an aristocratic German officer in the Wehrmacht. With echoes of Claus von Stauffenberg, he is torn between his duty as an officer & his integrity as a human being. He must investigate the deaths of a young German Embassy secretary, a Roman socialite & a cardinal, forcing him to confront historical characters like Field Marshal Kesselring & Monsignor Montini (the future Pope Paul VI).