Hiding In Plain SIght

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: We at Jungle Reds have so much in common. Rhys just got back from Italy, and the rest of us long to be there. Today,  the terrific Sarah Wisseman takes us there—but not to the Italy most of us ever get to see. Sarah knows the secret places. The hiding places. And –just as fascinating—what might be hidden there.

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

                 By Sarah Wisseman

      

Stolen art, exploring under Rome, and Italian food, what could be better?

I’ll take any excuse to revisit Italy. I first traveled there as an archaeology graduate student in 1975 and fell in love with all things Italian. Trastevere (“across the Tiber”) is my favorite neighborhood: cobbled streets, ocher and salmon and butternut buildings, and amazing pizza and pasta. Then there’s the Palatine Hill with its ruins of wealthy Roman homes, the dank and fascinating catacombs, and the Colosseum full of stray cats…

    The movies The Monuments Men and The Woman in Gold gave me my excuse. Suppose you are a wealthy, Jewish art owner living in Rome during World War II and you’ve just heard Hitler’s art brigade is about to raid your apartment? Where would you stash your art collection in a hurry?

     Hopefully, you have a neighbor or family member with another apartment or a country house available. You wouldn’t choose a dank, underground location for priceless paintings—not unless you were desperate and thought you could retrieve the art work before dampness and critters destroyed it.

      

     
In my latest mystery, Catacomb, someone succeeds so well in hiding valuable art under the city of Rome that the Monuments Men—the intrepid group of curators and scholars recruited by the Allies to recover Nazi-looted art—miss it.

     
          It would be easy to miss a few crates stuffed in a cavity under Rome. The city stands on a fragile bed of limestone riddled with sinkholes and fissures. Not only are there hundreds of kilometers of Jewish and Christian catacombs (burial tunnels and chambers), but there are also ancient sewers, aqueducts, and quarries intersecting with modern subway tunnels. Even the Sotterranei di Roma, a team of expert geologists and spelunkers who collaborate with archaeologists, haven’t explored or mapped them all. And the ones they have found are crumbling to bits and subject to frequent flooding.

         

         I loved doing the research for this book, especially finding stories I could incorporate in my novel. One was the saga of Cornelius Gurlitt, a Munich art dealer who kept a stunning collection of looted art in his Munich apartment until the Carabinieri finally uncovered it four years ago. Another source described a young woman flirting with a Nazi officer while her friends rescued stolen art destined for Hitler’s coffers in Berlin. The sad part is that, despite the best efforts of people all over Europe, over 2,000 of those artworks stolen during World War II are still missing today.

        Well, you don’t have to be living in 1940s Europe to need a place to hide people or valuables. In my hometown, tunnels under our downtown streets were once used to escape from Prohibition agents.

      Do you have any unexpected hideaways where you live?

     HANK: There are rooms behind the walls of the tunnels in Boston, very cool. The State House has them—and –my favorite—there are unused MBTA tunnels, just like the ones in New York. WHO knows hat might be there. What if..that’s where the Gardner Museum photos are hidden. Hm.  Big hmmm. Dibs on that book. Off to write a synopsis.

But yeah, do you have any unexpected hideaways where you live?

*********************************

Catacomb

 Art conservator Flora Garibaldi is just getting the hang of her new job restoring paintings in Rome, Italy. Then her policeman boyfriend, Vittorio Bernini, asks her to join a risky search under Rome for a lost trove of Nazi-looted art worth millions. Along with an international team of art experts, they face the daunting task of locating art in miles of underground tunnels.

After they discover evidence of recent digging underground, one of Vittorio’s Carabinieri colleagues is murdered. Flora and Vittorio find themselves up against a group of ruthless art thieves who will do anything to prevent the discovery of the art and its return to its rightful Jewish owners.

Sarah Wisseman is a retired archaeologist. Her experiences working on excavations and in museums inspired two contemporary series, the Lisa Donahue Archaeological Mysteries and the Flora Garibaldi Art History Mysteries. Her settings are places where she has lived or traveled (Israel, Italy, Egypt, Massachusetts, and Illinois) and her favorite museum used to be housed in a creepy old attic at the University of Illinois. www.sarahwisseman.com

Only in Roma--Guest Author Katherine Hall-Page

LUCY BURDETTE: Please welcome back today our good friend Katherine Hall Page, who has a new book out: THE BODY IN THE PIAZZA. Isn't it the most gorgeous cover? And I'm so jealous of her "research" in Rome...I'll let her tell it...

Katherine Hall Page: 
 
Arma virumque cano…
 Despite five years of Latin and a lifelong passion for all things Italian, I had never been to Rome until the spring of 2011 when I decided I needed to research a book I was setting there, as well as Tuscany. I have never been able to write about a place I have not actually visited and even the fictitious town of Aleford, Massachusetts where my amateur sleuth caterer Faith Fairchild lives is a compilation of towns I have lived in or know well. 

The idea for The Body in the Piazza came to me in the shower per usual. I was about to start The Body in the Boudoir, a prequel set in Manhattan—Faith’s bumpy, extremely perilous road to the altar— and it occurred to me that it would be fun to write a sequel. Boudoir starts as the Fairchilds are in a plane on their way to the Eternal City to celebrate a significant anniversary. For almost the rest of the book Faith thinks back to their 1990 momentous meeting in Manhattan and courtship. The ending places her back in the present as they land. Piazza picks it up from there. 

Only in Roma—Katherine's chance meeting at ristorante Pane Vino e San Daniele with Gianni Di Gregorio, her favorite actor/director of August Lunch and The Salt of Life 

I enlisted the aid of my friend Valerie Wolzien, author of the Susan Henshaw and Josie Pigeon mysteries, and off we went, leaving behind husbands we knew would not be as entranced as we are with wandering about local markets, darting into enticing little shops, etc. 

Chapter One of Piazza begins with: Faith Fairchild was drunk. Soused, sloshed, schnockered, pickled, potted, and looped— without a single sip of alcohol having crossed her lips. She was drunk on Rome. Intoxicating, inebriating Rome. This is an exact description of the way Valerie, who had never been there either, and I felt. Prosecco did play a part, but it was Roma itself we fell for—head over heels. Yes, we did gaze in awe at things like the Colosseum, the Berninis in the Borghese, the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, and Shelley’s last view overlooking the Spanish steps; but mostly we wandered, aided by my uncanny ability to get lost. We also talked to people, including a memorable evening with a friend of a friend who teaches at the University. She invited us to dinner and told us the history of the Jewish section of the city, the Ghetto, where she lives, as did her ancestors. 

Returning to the area for the best meals we had in Rome, we were haunted by her painful stories. The Fairchilds experience the same mixture.
The book continued to evolve as we traveled trip north. Both of us had spent time in this part of Italy, but we were looking at it through a different lens—the crime writer one. We did not attend a cooking school/resort, as the Fairchilds do, but imagination does have to come in to play. It wasn’t hard to dream one of these places up, especially after spending time in Florence’s Mercato Centrale, the city’s trattorias and later exploring the streets of Montepulciano, home of the justly famous Vino Nobile. 

When we found ourselves far underground below one of the town’s tasting rooms in the maze of tunnels that connects its palazzos, an entire subplot sprang to life. Discovering that there were also grottoes off some of the tunnels, carved from tufa—a soft limestone— and thought to be Etruscan tombs was the icing on the biscotti. Faith locked in…? What if?

There is a biscotti recipe in the book, also wonderfully easy pasta from scratch, but I’m going to include the one for Panna Cotta here. It’s so simple, so versatile and absolutely delicious—guaranteed to stun your guests. (The book also has another one, a little more heart-wise that uses yogurt)

Panna Cotta

1 envelope unflavored gelatin (approx. 1 tablespoon)
3 cups heavy cream or 1 cup whole milk plus 2 cups heavy cream
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Put 1 cup of the cream in a saucepan and sprinkle the gelatin on top. Let sit 3 minutes to soften the gelatin. Whisk and heat the mixture over low heat until the gelatin dissolves. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir, and heat over medium heat until the sugar dissolve, about 8-10 minutes. Do not boil.
Pour through a sieve into a pitcher (easier to fill the ramekins this way) and then fill 6 ramekins that you have placed on a tray. Cover with a sheet of plastic wrap and refrigerate for 5 hours or overnight. You can keep the panna cotta refrigerated for up to 2 days. To unmold, run a sharp knife around the edge of the ramekin and dip it in a flat pan of boiling water very briefly. If you overestimate and the panna cotta looks runny, just put the ramekin back in the fridge to firm up again. Invert the ramekin over a small plate and serve. You may also pour all the panna cotta into a bowl, cover and refrigerate before scooping portions out into dessert bowls or martini-like cocktail glasses—very chic.
Serves 6.

Garnish panna cotta with fruit, especially summer fruits, which can also be made into a coulis to drizzle over and around it. Fresh strawberries with a few drops of balsamic vinegar, honey, lemon zest, ground pistachios, and ginger flakes are all delicious toppings as well. Using this basic recipe, you may try coffee, hazelnut extract, chocolate, even green and other teas as flavoring. For the cardamom version mentioned in the text, use 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 teaspoon ground cardamom.

 Ciao and Buon Appetito!!

Katherine Hall Page is the author of the award winning Faith Fairchild series. The Body in the Piazza is available in hardcover, large print, e-Books and audio. Read more on Katherine’s website or visit her on Facebook.

When in Rome

LUCY BURDETTE:  My husband and I were nearing the end of a vacation to the Croatian coast and Italy when hurricane Sandy bore down on the eastern seaboard. Our flight home was cancelled and rescheduled for four days later, leaving us heartsick and worried.

In Rome.

I know, it's hard to feel sorry for someone trapped in Rome. 

And once we'd learned that our house was intact and our friends and neighbors and animals safe, we tried to make the best of the extra days. We'd visited Rome a few years earlier and blitzed through the major tourist attractions--the Coliseum, the Borghese Gallery, the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain…

Before we knew anything about the big storm, we'd planned to spend one final day in the city to tour the Vatican museum and St. Peter's Basilica. This turned out to be the perfect distraction on the day we were most worried about things back home. I'd seen Michelangelo's masterpiece 40 years ago--it's still mind-boggling, fabulous, incredible. And the hordes of tourists are mind-boggling too--imagine the Sistine Chapel crammed with people madly taking flash photos even though it's expressly forbidden.

So the next few days, we visited less well known sights that were also amazing--the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, with audio guide narration by a prince who calls it home, and paintings by Raphael, Caravaggio, and Titian…

And the Villa Farnesina, a sumptuous Renaissance villa decorated with frescos done by Raphael and others.

Rome is full of shops displaying gorgeous shoes and clothing. And the Romans are so much more fashionable than Americans! But don't be tempted by the high heels--this means you Hank:). The cobblestone streets make fancy shoes and inattention dangerous. 

And oh, the best pizza in the world can be found at Forno Campo di Fiori. Here you crowd up to the counter and point at whatever's come hot from the stone ovens--maybe zucchini blossom, or potato and rosemary, or our favorite proscuitto. Even gobbling the squares standing in the rain was heaven.

And even if you don't have room for a real dessert, you can certainly squeeze in a cup of gelato. 

We'd made arrangements to stay in a convent for our one night in Rome, Casa di Santa Brigida overlooking the Piazza Farnese, just a block off the Campo di Fiori. Luckily the nuns were able to take us in for the extra three nights, and they could not have been kinder.  
The loveliest surprise was their rooftop garden, with roses and a view over the city and a beautiful bell that rang when we were visiting. You can hear the bells on the little video just below--please excuse my dreadful photography--why I was filming the ground, I couldn't tell you:).

 Everything is old in Rome--it puts life in perspective...People have survived horrible things for hundreds of years...

All that said, I've never been so glad to be home.

If you had to be stranded away from home, where would you choose?

David Hewson and Rome's Fallen Angel

DEB: Today I'm especially pleased to be talking to one of my favorite writers, David Hewson, about his new Nic Costa novel, The Fallen Angel.

I first met David a few years ago when we were both on the guest faculty for the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference, and I've been a huge fan ever since. David's books, set in present day Rome, are intelligent, articulate, evocative, and compelling. David is also an extremely nice guy, a talented photographer, and a foodie. No matter how disturbing the case, David's characters never lose sight of the really important things in life, and his descriptions of Roman food are enough to make you book your plane ticket. (David also--at least according to the photos on his blog--has the neatest desk of any writer I've ever seen. This is obviously a subject for future discussion...)

In The Fallen Angel, when British academic Malise Gabriel falls to his death from a Rome apartment, detective Nic Costa rapidly comes to realize that there is much more to the accident than he first thought. It also becomes apparent that Malise’s family — mysterious and tragic daughter Mina, stoic wife Cecilia and troubled son Robert — may be keeping vital information hidden.

Costa becomes obsessed with the case, intrigued by Mina’s story which seems to be linked to the sixteenth-century real-life tragedy of a young Italian noblewoman, Beatrice Cenci.

As the investigation deepens, Rome’s dark and seedy side is uncovered, revealing a tangle of deceit, treachery and corruption. Costa realizes that the key to the truth lies with the Gabriels. Why are they so unwilling to co-operate, and who, or what, is the reason for their silence?

Tess Gerritsen says, "Intricately plotted and gorgeously written, THE FALLEN ANGEL weaves a spell that will entrap you until the final page. David Hewson’s Rome is dark and tantalizing, seductive and dangerous, a place where present-day crimes ring with the echoes of history."

I wholeheartedly agree, and asked David to tell us more.

DEB: David, I was particularly intrigued by the fact that you, as a Brit, choose to set your books in Italy, a place neither your native country nor your home,although I understand that you spend considerable time there researching the books. And although your characters are Italian, you tell your stories from an insider's viewpoint. Do you find having an outsider's perspective an advantage?

DAVID: One of the daftest pieces of advice given to wannabe writers is 'write about what you know'. It works for some people but for a lot it doesn't. Most of us are bored with what we know and take it for granted. When you write about what you don't know you have to learn about it, see it in a different light and perspective, and build your image of it from scratch. To write these books I had to move to Rome for a while, learn Italian, build my Rome brick by brick.

I'm sure it's the same with your England, Debs. Books are work and setting them somewhere alien to us makes us work harder, which hopefully makes for a more vivid world when we come to create them. I think it also makes us more willing to be bold and creative with that world too, more than we would with the one we live in day-to-day.

DEB: We are all too familiar with the fictional male cop--middle-aged or past it, alcoholic, dysfunctional, unable to sustain relationships, lives only for his job . . . and yet in Nic Costa you've given us a policeman in his twenties. Nic is a complex and fascinating character, and although he's suffered loss in the course of the series, he is coping. Was the departure from the flawed anti-hero detective a deliberate choice on your part?

DAVID: It was a very deliberate decision. Most male crime characters have been handed down from the brilliantly-drawn template of Chandler. I wanted to move away from that to concentrate on an ordinary, decent guy struggling to come to terms with a fractured, corrupt world. That seems to me a much more modern and familiar dilemma than Chandler's lone wolf, damaged individual from the Forties. Not everyone gets it, of course, and occasionally people say, 'You don't write crime at all.' And maybe they're right. Can't say I know or care. The stories and the characters are what matter, not some genre tag stuck on the side.

DEB: One of the many things I love about your books is the well-drawn ensemble cast. Again, was this a deliberate choice? (I know in my case, I began with the two main characters, and over the series the continuing cast has grown a bit like topsy.)

DAVID: I wrote the first book as a standalone, and that is very much Costa's story. When it was finished my editor suggested very clearly - with the offer of a very enticing contract - that I turn this into a series. I had to think long and hard about that. I was worried I was going to go down the path to the Reichenbach Falls, where Conan Doyle shoved Holmes to his death because he was sick of him (only to revive him later).

Avoiding character fatigue was something I really wanted to work on. My secret was to think back to Ed McBain's wonderful 87th Precinct series and give Costa a family of similarly-decent people around him. It's that which has sustained the book as they grow, I think, and attracted the TV development deal too. But I've been very careful not to let the family grow too much. There are, and always will be, only four principal protagonists: Costa, Peroni, Teresa Lupo and Leo Falcone. No more - the rest are side characters.

DEB: How did you learn about Beatrice Cenci, and why did you decide to weave the novel around this haunting story?

DAVID: I spend a lot of time in Rome hanging round places, reading, talking to people. The Cenci story is well known in Rome but not much outside, even in Italy. I have a stack of story ideas waiting to be written. Beatrice was just one of them. One of the many things I love about Rome is the way the past informs the present. It's not history, it's a part of today.

Beatrice died more than five hundred years ago yet it doesn't take much to sense her presence still in the city today. With a little research I was able to see where she lived, where she was imprisoned, buried, executed, see the painting supposedly of her in the Barberini, then finally go into the black museum of the Ministry of Justice and see the sword historians believe was used by her executioner. She's a fascinating character, part saint, part something else perhaps, and her dilemma - how far can you go to defend your own identity - seemed to me a very modern one which is why I chose it. But there are plenty more Roman stories with that feel too. The problem is always picking one.

DEB: I, for one, hope you will pick many more, and I'm wondering what's next in the offing. What about you, JR readers? Any questions for David? He'll be dropping in throughout the day to answer them, although as he's on UK time we'll have to try not to keep him up too late!