As Rome falls and the Wehrmacht retreats into the mountains -- the same week the Allies storm Normandy -- a German colonel investigates a murder he has no right to solve, using the one man he has orders to execute.Abruzzo, June 1944. Lieutenant Colonel Martin Bora is diverted into the wild country below the Gran Sasso on a mission he cannot refuse: destroy a cache of explosive diplomatic correspondence, then silence the socialist lawyer who holds it. He has barely arrived in the remote village of Faracruci when, unaware the Allies have just landed in Normandy, an American soldier is found stabbed in the square. Bora can neither report the death nor investigate it officially -- so he enlists the very man he is meant to execute. Together they uncover a second, older crime, and a truth that implicates the village's most respected citizen. Ben Pastor's ninth Martin Bora novel is the most purely enjoyable in the series: a classic village mystery, a wartime thriller, and a study of a man who believes in justice while being ordered to violate it.