Clare Phillips is a British Washington Post correspondent in 80s Rome, a roving reporter deeply embedded in Italian culture. A graduate in archeology, she spends her free time exploring the city and further afield. One day, while visiting ancient tombs with her best friend, American priest trainee Daniel, she discovers a severed ear abandoned in a dark corner. Being a reporter, Clare is reluctant to leave things to the police, especially the notoriously corrupt Italian police. Eventually sharing her information, she also embarks on an investigation of her own, and finds herself embroiled in a kidnapping case, as well as a broader conspiracy involving the Vatican’s purchase of a ‘Kylix’, an ancient decorative cup of Greek origin. Clare’s investigations immediately put her at risk. From relatively subtle tailing as she moves around the city, to being bundled into the back of her own car and driven at speed around small-town Italy, as she uncovers layers of conspiracy, her friend Daniel and the wider international press gradually get drawn into the messiness.
Alongside Clare’s main narrative, readers also hear from the kidnap victim in regular asides, and grab insights from other characters in a clever ‘big picture’ weaving together of the broader plot, as well as learning of suspicious goings on within the church, and within a form of local mafioso who are hoping to keep interest away from their lucrative hustle. The whole thing makes DEADLINE ROME: The Vatican Kylix a rapid-fire and easy-reading yarn, one that draws on the experience of author Sari Gilbert, who spent a chunk of her own life as a reporter in Rome, with her expertise in the area practically seeping from the pages. In fact, stronger than the main narrative of ‘The Vatican Kylix’ itself is the general sense readers get of place in reading the text. Italy is infused with a sense of identity throughout the book, one that might align with clichés — there’s plenty of coffee, pasta, and snobbishness about clothes or foreign food — but is also delivered in a way that feels distinctly embedded in experience and oozes authenticity.
Thankfully, Clare is also a rounded character: throughout the book she’s dealing with a difficult editor, personal issues, a sense that she has to fight for her place, and concerns that she’s throwing Daniel under the bus, all aspects that add to the color and pacing of the novel. The result is a book with a relatively simple core narrative, one that could be summed up in just a couple of minutes, but a sense of texture, subtlety and depth that emerges in aspects like the way the locals make their lunch, the vehicles on the roads, and the naturally-inserted knowledge of the inner workings of the Roman international press.
An easy read that transports, in other words, and while the mystery at the heart of the book is never quite a world beater, its setting is utterly enthralling, and the thriller aspect pounds along at a page-turning pace. The combination sells the book in a heartbeat.
Rome circa 1980s is the star of Sari Gilbert’s DEADLINE ROME: The Vatican Kylix, a rapidly-paced crime thriller where the core mystery — involving archeological treasures, the mafia, and the Vatican –almost take second place to the sheer mouthwatering detail of the environment in which it is set.
~James Hendicott for IndieReader