I enjoyed the portrayal and factions, bureaucratic turf wars, national animosities, divisions within divisions within the micro-state of Vatican City, only made sovereign by the Lateran Treaty with Italy (Mussolini) in 1929. The Vatican police force is divided into three, the neutral, the fascist, and the anti-fascist. The Swiss Guards have real uniforms and weapons. The Vatican police and Vatican’s Swiss Guards are two separate groups and not friends. Most of the Swiss are Sweizcher Deutsch who look down on the Italians in the police. The police are called gendarmes for some reason. Our hero interacts with the gendarmes inside the Vatican, while the Swiss Guards patrol the line of demarcation.
The book offers an explanation of Pope Pius XII’s quiescence in 1943 anyway. By then there were 5000 Jews, downed Allied airmen, anti-fascist Italians, salted away in Vatican City and in Vatican properties (part the Vatican’s sovereign soil by the Treaty) elsewhere in Rome. The Pope’s vast summer palace in the hills outside Rome was home to another 15,000 refugees. Silence might be the best way to avoid interesting the Germans in them.
Moreover, with Mussolini reduced to a puppet up North and only the most extreme Italian fascist left in Rome along with the occupying Germans, there was the danger that the Germans might decide to take the Pope north for his own safety on the pretext of Allied bombing, exposing not only the refugees in the Vatican but also its many treasures and destroying its studied neutrality. A low profile might be best so as not to give a pretext. Hmm, but if the Germans had a mind to do that, a pretext could be conjured as it was many times before.
Also liked the tension on the white painted line of demarcation in the square in front of the Vatican that still marks off the sovereignty of the Vatican, but in these days it was patrolled by the Swiss Guards on one side and the German army on the other. I liked the geography of the buildings and gardens in the Vatican, including the Vatican radio.
The evils of the Gestapo and SS were old news. Our intrepid hero was cardboard as were most of the other characters. Though there were a variety of characters and they did differ, I admit. I liked the way some of them reacted to being trapped in the gilded cage of the Vatican when the war cut them off, like the American diplomat who disappeared into the brandy bottle.
Some interesting characters appeared but not enough was made of the artful scrounger, the butler John May, Detective Cipriano of the Vatican police, or Abe the pilot lock-picker.
Not sure what to make of the good German, Remke and his team. Doomed, of course. The Italian OVRA sadist was a drooling stereotype as was the evil Croatian bishop.
The villain was hard to credit.
Billy tried too hard to be a reverse snob. Most of his wisecracks were tired sixty years ago. As is usually the case his backstory was simply a distracting filler.
Many of the events take place in the German College in the Vatican but no ever connects this with the Germans outside and there seem to be no Germans in the Vatican. No German cardinal or archbishops or bishop.
Nothing about the Italian day workers who come to work every day.
The prose is workmanlike.
The Billy Boyle books each have different setting so that is goodbye to the Vatican. But I will try searching for Vatican krimies.
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