Everyday the people working with Hugh were risking their lives, just as he risked his own life everyday. It is an unforgettable novel of love, sacrifice and what it means to be human in the most extreme circumstances.

It is estimated through the use of safe houses and churches this indomitable group saved some six thousand five hundred people under the very eyes of the Gestapo. Many of these obscene war criminals were – filing down the teeth of prisoners to pulp being interrogated during the day and tucking their kids in bed at night. Their choir practice sessions are a front for their efforts toward devising plans to aid escaped PoWs– a mammoth task that encompasses sheltering the escapees in safe houses, acquiring travel documents in false names and arranging transport to Switzerland- a task made more difficult on account of ruthless Gestapo officer Obersturmbannfurher Paul Hauptmann, who was aware of the existence of an Escape Line and was keeping a close watch on Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty in hopes of catching him and /or his friends at the right moment.This was a game played out against the Nazi oppressor and through The Monsignor and his band of loyal friends, they managed to save thousands of Jews and Allied trapped soldiers. This read of historical fiction, based upon the true story of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, is a literary thriller. Beautifully crafted, his razor-sharp dialogue is to be savoured, and he employs dark humour to great effect.

There's no doubt in my mind that the Monsignor’s training prepared him to intervene in difficult situations rather than being content to remain a bystander. I particularly like the way the author chooses to tell his tale via the countdown in 1943, which is interspersed with BBC Interviews of the choir members recorded in 1962 to 63 and some transcripts.But Hauptmann’s net begins closing in on the Escape Line and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical. Joseph O’Connor has created an unforgettable novel of love, faith and sacrifice, and what it means to be truly human in the most extreme circumstances. A few years prior to the events of 1943, as an official Vatican visitor, O’Flaherty had been assigned to visit an Italian concentration camp for British PoWs. It details raw courage and the selfish acts of all those who worked with Hugh to raise funds and find accommodation for the growing number of escapees.

The book alternates between that time period and twenty years later as those who aided in the escapes are interviewed by PBS. A man facing the not inconsiderable pressures of a Himmler expecting him to destroy the Escape Line through which so many are spirited out of the city and the country. His vivid descriptions made it possible to see the events in this book/audiobook takin place in my mind. On Christmas Eve, 1943, a mission (code name Rendimento) was run by members of a choir and a network of accomplices. It's another part of the book where O'Connor excels, such is his attention to detail of the buildings in the basilica.In the shadow of lavish estates, extravagant parties, predatory business deals, and calculated political influence, three lives become dangerously intertwined: Ajay is the watchful servant, born into poverty, who rises through the family's ranks. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends and big decisions, and learning that people don't always mean what they say. That book utilised a number of structural techniques including diary entries, letters and transcripts of conversations as well as more traditional third person narration, and the same is true of this latest novel.