What if the Monuments Men missed a trove of Nazi-looted art
under the city of Rome? This is the premise of my newest Flora Garibaldi
mystery, Catacomb
(March 2016).
Thousands of art works were looted from museums, churches,
and private homes all over Europe by Adolf Hitler and his minions. By the end
of World War II, much of the art remained stashed in underground tunnels,
uninhabited buildings, and salt mines. Recruited by the Allied Forces, a small
army of art historians and museum personnel took on the arduous and dangerous
task of locating missing art, moving it to safe locations, and beginning the
long process of returning the art to original owners.
In Catacomb, Flora
is recruited by her policeman boyfriend, Vittorio Bernini, to join the
Carabinieri team of officers and art experts to locate the missing art. The only
clue they have is that it is “somewhere in the catacombs,” which
means searching hundreds of kilometers of tunnels. Flora joins the archivists,
trying to pinpoint the names, neighborhoods, and preferred burial places of
Jewish art owners living in Rome during the 1940s. Unfortunately, the scanty
documentation they find is uncatalogued, un-digitized, and scattered in
libraries and archives all over Rome. Vittorio’s team, including archaeologist
and museum director Lisa Donahue and conservator Ellen Perkins (heroines of my
previous archaeology series) discover that searching the catacombs is not
enough: the art could be in other underground places such as ancient Roman
quarries and aqueducts, or crumbling niches off modern subway tunnels.
The search turns dangerous when Flora is followed in the
first catacomb she visits and then a colleague of Vittorio’s is murdered in a
subway station. People outside the Carabinieri are looking for the same art
trove, and they appear to have insider knowledge…
My research for this book took me on wonderful tangents,
such as creating the diary of a Frenchwoman from a Jewish family of art owners
who leaves Paris to marry an Italian. I also used true stories: the Italian
diversion of Nazi trucks loaded with art intended for Hitler’s collection in
Berlin, and the discovery of vast amounts of art in the apartment of art dealer
Cornelius Gurlitt (I moved the apartment from Munich to Rome, and changed the
name of the art dealer).
And writing this sequel to Burnt Siena gave me the perfect excuse to revisit Rome, virtually
imbibing and eating my way through yet another amazing Italian city.
7 comments:
Sarah,
This sounds like a wonderful novel and a strong frame for a mystery novel. Wishing you much success!
Thank you, Jacquiline!
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