There is, as readers will discover, no absolute or easy answer to the riddle of Wächter’s death — that of a healthy 39-year-old, fit and energetic, who had successfully evaded capture for four years and was determined to go on doing so. If occasionally Sands’s doggedness can seem a little repetitious, the picture he evokes is unfailingly clear and lively. The seething world of post-war Rome, with its senior fascists reprieved and returning to prominence, its war criminals lurking in hiding, its spies and secret services brokering deals and its adventurers and profiteers making fortunes, has seldom been more vividly described.