A literary sequel worth its salt should satisfy two types of readers: those who read the first installment and those who didn’t. Joseph O’Connor’s new novel is one such book.
A priest and his team foil Nazis in ‘The Ghosts of Rome’
Fiction: Joseph O’Connor crafts a gripping drama about an underground group helping refugees flee Nazi-occupied Rome.
For the Minnesota Star Tribune
January 27, 2025 at 3:00PM
The Dublin-born writer has fashioned it so that it functions as both a standalone work and a follow-up to its predecessor. “My Father’s House” was about a clandestine group that smuggled Allied soldiers and Jews out of Nazi-occupied Rome. “The Ghosts of Rome” picks up the story and tells how the ragtag band of heroes continues to risk all as the Nazi net closes in.
O’Connor brings newcomers up to speed by sketching the historical background and outlining his key players. It is February 1944 and German forces have tightened their grip on Rome. Despite the best efforts of SS Commander Paul Hauptmann, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and his underground activists, cheekily known as the Choir, are still hiding in the shadows and running an escape line for fugitives.
Pressure mounts for them when they take in two American POWs who prove reckless. Their troubles multiply when they come across a half-dead airman with no identification.
A dangerous mission is devised to find a trustworthy doctor and evacuate the casualty. But Hauptmann has been given a final warning by Heinrich Himmler to dismantle the escape line and liquidate the Choir and so implements extreme measures to hunt them down. It might be easier than he thinks, for one chorister soon comes forward, and after admitting to being tired of living “like a mongrel skulking tunnels and holes,” divulges valuable information.
Structurally, thematically and tonally, O’Connor’s second volume in this series has much in common with his first. The narrative comprises a vivid patchwork of varied voices and diverse texts, from letters to memoir extracts to interview transcripts to Gestapo reports.
The expertly rendered backdrop depicts Rome not so much as the Eternal City but one on its last legs, full of hunger, desperation and relentless terror. O’Connor takes us off the beaten track as his characters take refuge in an abandoned theater and other safe houses, traverse forgotten “squeeze-throughs” and “scurry-holes,” before heading below street level to navigate a subterranean maze of conduits, caverns and dripping grottoes.
Once again there are many high-tension episodes involving money drops, people transfers, frantic chases and great escapes. O’Connor stokes the suspense by way of short, staccato lines and arresting descriptions: “The dread is like a hand around her spine.”
Best of all is the return of a brilliant cast. Among its colorful members is British diplomat D’Arcy Osborne, Cockney rogue John May and Dutch reporter Marianna de Vries. The first book, though an ensemble piece, placed flinty priest O’Flaherty in the spotlight. This one switches the focus to Giovanna Landini, a gutsy countess who won’t be bowed or broken by Hauptmann’s threats.
Richly atmospheric and pulsing with excitement, this novel breaks the second-in-a-trilogy “curse.” O’Connor’s final act can’t come soon enough.
Malcolm Forbes, who also has written for the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, lives in Edinburgh.
The Ghosts of Rome
By: Joseph O’Connor.
Publisher: Europa Editions, 383 pages, $28.
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