My Father's House: From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Star of the Sea (The Rome Escape Line, 1)

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Desperate to assert control, Berlin sends a new Gestapo Head to break O’Flaherty’s network and terrify the city into obedience. Premium Digital includes access to our premier business column, Lex, as well as 15 curated newsletters covering key business themes with original, in-depth reporting.

The charitable acts at the centre of My Father’s House are the opposite of this: quiet, heroic and worthy of this fine retelling. Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Towards the end of the book, that gap shuts horribly as, casually and meaninglessly, Hauptmann executes someone whom we thought he liked. O’Connor also has consistent wit and lightness of touch — when, for example, some American servicemen insist on throwing balls from house to house across the street after they are told that they can’t go outside. And he is a little overly fond of invoking national stereotypes, particularly the gesticulation and general emotionality of Italians — their “natural love of life” — and the volubility of the Irish.

Violence is indirectly conveyed in the destruction of a fine piano, the appearance of a full set of teeth. Any changes made can be done at any time and will become effective at the end of the trial period, allowing you to retain full access for 4 weeks, even if you downgrade or cancel.

With an Irish priest in Vatican City at the novel’s centre, there are also persistent questions about the idea and morality of neutrality, especially for the church. The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice. It is an unusual and intense style, which draws you into the moment because of the danger that could lie around the next corner. My Father’s House, the first in a trilogy, is a novel full of deft characterisation and knowledge, not just the historical facts, but the broader – grander?Only the heavy shellac telephones and the red metal fire-bucket announce the twentieth century as fact. Above all, it is a book that resonates because it retells a true story of courage, compassion, and defiance in dark days. While the benefit of historical hindsight inevitably diminishes the sense of jeopardy, the novel’s evocative scene-setting, its propulsive narration and its powerful depiction of bravery and unity in extremis, all make for an engrossing read. O’Connor keeps an admirable command of the various strains and voices, some fictional, others, such as the British diplomat Sir D’Arcy Osborne, drawn from reality. But all the while, he is distributing detailed instructions to each for what to do on the next Rendimento, the mission to help save thousands of Allied men.