Top-notch storytelling filled with emotion and drama.
A small band of heroes tries to thwart the Nazi stranglehold on Rome.
In 1944, “Satan went walking in Italy,” and German troops occupy the Eternal City. They leave the tiny Vatican alone in exchange for the pope’s strict neutrality, although at any moment they could crush its quarter of a square mile in the blink of an eye. Against His Holiness’s apparent wishes, a daring group in the Vatican harbors the Choir, a band of Escape Line activists who help Allied POWs and other fugitives evade enemy capture. Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, a real historical figure, leads the rescue efforts at great personal risk and despite apparent disapproval by Pope Pius. My Father’s House (2023) established the basic premise: Save as many people as possible from the villainous Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann. In this exciting sequel, an Allied airman is shot down and wounded, parachuting to an uncertain fate. The Choir brings him in, but he desperately needs medical help to save his life. They can only find a French medical student who has never performed surgery before, and she risks her life to help. The characters are memorable: Monsignor O’Flaherty speaks seven languages, is “fluent in silences,” and often breaks his vow of obedience to papal authority. The widowed Contessa Giovanna Landini shows great courage in standing up to Hauptmann, even when he takes over her home. Meanwhile, Himmler sends Hauptmann a top-secret communiqué warning of the Führer’s “intense displeasure” that the Escape Line still exists. Hauptmann is ordered to complete the job of liquidating the “criminals” escaping into Rome and “smash the Escape Line. Or face the inevitable.” Himmler reminds him that his family is living in Berlin. The story is exciting and rich with prose that’s a joy to read: An American looks at the night sky and declares, “The angels ride Harleys.…The stars are their headlights coming.” This well researched novel can stand on its own, but readers may find even more enjoyment reading My Father’s House first.
Top-notch storytelling filled with emotion and drama.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798889660620
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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