The Devil's End Game

After Mussolini was deposed in July, 1943, the situation in Northern Italy rapidly turned into a chaotic witches' brew. Marshal Badoglio, retired former commander of the Italian Army, formed a new government that signed an Armistice with the Allies, whereupon the German Army poured in to take the Italians' place in the fight against the Allies. Thereafter, although the Germans shipped 600,000 Italians as slave laborers to the Reich, plundered Italy of anything needed by the Nazi war machine and ruthlessly applied the Holocaust in Italy, Mussolini formed a new "Fascist Social Republic" that continued to support the Germans. From then on, both his government and the Germans struggled to maintain order through savage reprisals against growing attacks by Italian partisans. Thirty-eight years later, detective Leopold Czernik, trouble-shooter for big business, is engaged by an Italian Holocaust survivor to track down art works stolen from his family by the Nazis. Czernik's investigations lead him into a tangled web of violence, treachery and murder.