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

Hiding from adventure

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Today's guest blogger claims to hide from adventure - but we know better...

DANA CAMERON: I had not planned on climbing up the side of a granite outcropping over the very cold and very deep water of the Kennebec River.  Four of us had motored to a little island in mouth of the river to identify archaeological sites when the engine developed problems.  A storm suddenly was blowing up, and we didn't want to be stranded when it hit.  Our friend rowed us, one at a time in the very small boat, over to the nearest spit of the mainland, but the dock was up.  We had to climb twenty feet to the top of the cliff, trying to avoid slipping on the rubbery seaweed. 

My husband and I reached the top, breathing hard and hands scratched, as our friend rowed back.  We were twenty minutes from home by boat—but two hours by car.  We sat waiting to be picked up, and my husband looked at me. 

“This is so going into a book, isn't it?”
I shrugged—well, yeah.  We only meant to be out on the river for an hour on a nice day.  This was too good not to use.  I don't go looking for adventure.

With regards to adventure, I'm strictly with Bilbo Baggins-at-home.  A load of strange dwarves talking dragons and gold shows up on your doorstep, on the recommendation of an unreliable, scrape-acquaintance wizard?  I would have exactly the same response:  Hell no, thank you very much.  And please put down my good china.

I prefer my danger in books.  On graph paper with polyhedral dice.  Or in the cinema, with James Bond or Jason Bourne or Lara Croft.  I go a long way to avoid adventures in real life.  I plan, schedule, make back-up plans. 

And yet... 

“Here, drink this,” said the cultured gentleman I'd known for exactly four hours.  He handed me a plastic container of water from a holy spring from under a church in the Golden Horn in Istanbul.  The site had been considered a holy place by many religions for millennia.  “It's tested every year, clean and safe.”

Scenes from every fairy tale I'd ever read flashed through my brain.  When is it ever a good idea to drink from unknown mystical sources?  We'd arranged the tours envisioning a good walk and sightseeing.  All terribly genteel, with tea and cookies.

Our guide was a friend of a friend, highly recommended and very knowledgeable.  Quite apart from my caution in drinking water abroad, it would have been extremely rude to refuse him, and in front of one of the church's priests. 

I drank.  We spent the rest of the day exploring churches, museums, and the famous underground Basilica Cistern—all as planned.  It isn't really an risky venture, if you have the assurance of experts.  It was a guided tour, after all.  But I had a little Buffy Summers swagger in my walk the rest of the day, that bottle of holy water in my pocket.  In my mind, I was having an adventure. 

Writers have a habit of spinning something harmless and a little unexpected into...swashbuckling.  Most of my writing friends haven't experienced all the things they write about: murders, vampires, post-apocalyptic scenarios.  They are nice, quiet folks.  The difference is, they have the urge to take even the idea of a close-call, add a little imagination, maybe some paranoia, and transform it into an escapade.  We're not looking for adventure, but just idea of it inspires our work.

The thing is, adventure's going to find you, as soon as you step out the front door.  Something commonplace but unexpected happens and boom!  We go running for the keyboard. 

Or maybe most of us really would run off after the dwarves like Bilbo, given half the chance.  Would you?

Whether writing noir, historical fiction, urban fantasy, thriller, or traditional mystery, Dana Cameron draws from her expertise in archaeology.  Her fiction (including several Fangborn stories) has won multiple Agatha, Anthony  and Macavity Awards and earned an Edgar Award nomination.    Dana blogs with the Femmes Fatales www.femmesfatales.typepad.com , and you can learn more at www.danacameron.com, Facebook, Twitter, and GoodReads. 

About SEVEN KINDS OF HELL:The first of three novels set in the Fangborn 'verse, SEVEN KINDS OF HELL, is published by 47North. Zoe Miller's an archaeologist on the run from her father's family. They're reputed to be no good, and her own tendency to violence—and the occasional glimpse of fangs in the mirror—has her worried about her sanity.  But when her cousin is kidnapped, Zoe has to come to grips with her powers:  She's a werewolf and Fangborn, part of a family of supernatural creatures dedicated to protecting humanity.  Zoe must use all of her archaeological talents and supernatural abilities against her enemies—human and Fangborn—who seek an artifact of world-ending power.

http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Kinds-Hell-Fangborn-ebook/dp/B00943A8RE

ROSEMARY: Thanks for visiting, Dana! and don't forget JRs, one lucky commenter will win a signed copy of Dana's latest Fangborn novel Seven Kinds of Hell!