I wanted to love this book, but the adjective I keep coming back to as a descriptor is: bloodless.

There's a lot of ponderousness and little action to fill the pages. How do you take the pre-WWII period of a life among Italian emigres into Frances, people trying to cause Mussolini problems, and render it dull. There's an assassination at the beginning and lots of moments that could be tense. There's Italian secret police and a MacGuffin-like list of Nazi's emplaced into Italy that could be a knock out if they could get it into the right hands. There's all the elements of a good story here, but it's like an electrician's kit of wires and bare bulbs that's never assembled. No light. There are five good scenes separated by thirty or fifty pages of digression. Lack of passion, lack of action.

I will try another of the author's books later to see I missed something. I hope so. I love this period in history and was prepared to be amazed. But right now I'd suggest to myself I should pick up a Robert Harris novel.