Description
Mussolini’s Rome, 1936
Two trainee priests are arrested for drunken brawling in the red-light district.
Brendan Lehane – an athletic antipodean with ‘fits too fast for a man of God’ – is sent on a dangerous mission to strife-torn Abyssinia, where he will cause far-reaching problems and acquire a passion for vengeance.
Tomas Aquino Reyes – a dashing young aristocrat who has forsaken half of Andalusia for a life of poverty and chastity – returns home to a civil war and falls in love with ‘the most exquisite young woman of which Spain could boast in that decade’.
What follows brings the two friends and the Vatican to the very edge of disaster.
Many decades later they meet again in Rome as Cardinals and recall the dramatic story of their youth in fascist Europe, when evil forces took them far beyond the scope of their vows.
Thriller writer Michael Wall has created a superb new novel to follow up his earlier bestsellers, Museum Street, Friendly Fire and The Cassino Legacy. Formerly chief policy adviser to New Zealand Prime Minister Jim Bolger, he now lives in the Wairarapa.
Paperback, 427 pages. First edition thus. In very good preloved condition.