Set in Italy in the aftermath of world war 2 we meet Edward Burgess who's a rather morose fellow, drinking his life away and seeing people that aren't there, that is, until they are. He sees someone who looks a lot like someone he used to know who turned traitor and became a Nazi during world war 2, by chance he ends up in the same remote commune, Montefalcone, as this man and the collapse of a bridge across the chasm that separates Montefalcone from the outside world leaves them trapped together. It's in this village that Burgess finds himself falling for a peasant woman and coming back to life, it's also were he confirms that he isn't seeing things are the traitor Martel is in fact also in this village. As such, after identifying each other it becomes clear Martel cannot let Burgess leave the village alive once the bridge is repaired.

It sounds like a reasonable story, but oh boy is it rather dull initially. Then when things seem like they might accelerate and become a bit more exciting, or at worse, more interesting, the story still just plods along at a rather methodical pace. It manages to shake off the dull air the initial third of the book had but never really gets much further than bearable.

Having read quite a few 1940s books of this genre I genuinely don't understand how some people are rating this as 5 stars. It really doesn't excel in any particular way, the scenery isn't vibrant, the characters aren't particularly memorable or constructed with depth, the story itself isn't novel or gripping, it really is just a resoundingly average book from the era to my eyes. Bob Hope's 1944 world war 2 memoir I Never Left Home has more excitement. ( )

In Italy, after the war is over, Burgess is struggling with having lost his closest buddies. He keeps hallucinating their characteristics in people he sees in the street or across the bar. His friend suggests he take a trip to the countryside to clear his head. Almost subconsciously, he begins retracing the steps of a trip he and some school chums took many years previous. The trip does good to clear his head and he makes friends in a tiny village, but soon learns he is trapped with a dangerous enemy.
This book started quite slow and I spent much of the beginning wondering if it was even going to get interesting as Burgess morosely pondered his dead friends, questions of why he alone would be spared and whether he deserved to live. Just as his life was beginning to seem worthwhile, the enemy was revealed and things progressed at a quicker pace. I wasn't terribly pleased with the ending, but it was really the only way things could have gone without leaving loose ends. Sad, though. ( )