authorjrrogers
In this atmospheric thriller of subterfuge and illicit love, Colonel Francesco Ferrazza, a disciplined and inflexible Royal Italian Army officer with Italy's Fascist Military Information Service, and his attractive British wife, Emilia, are posted to Asmara affectionately referred to as "Little Rome" by Mussolini. The colonel is a familiar figure at the military casino and bordello where he brags at the bar he can bend a fireplace poker in half. But he is astonished when in 1938 he is ordered by his Rome superior to set in motion a clandestine sabotage operation of the engineering marvel that is the Asmara-Massawa cableway that links Italian Eritrea to the sea.
And as the tick-tock of the clock counts down the final hours the colonel belatedly begins to grasp that in 'Little Rome' nothing is what it seems, no one can be trusted and, when serving Mussolini, failure will never be condoned.