This is a pretty good WW2 thriller, set in Italy. It reminded me a bit of Sebastian Faulks’ Charlotte Grey.
I didn’t like the title, as Lucifer is a minor character and his game (as a British spy working for the Italian fascists, betraying military secrets to the Brits) is peripheral to the plot.
The central characters are Friedrich Schaffer, a German soldier in North Africa sent by Rommel to Rome to sort out the leak, and Cordelia Oliveri, a young Jewish Italian woman who runs a hotel there.
Assisted by some anti-fascist priests in the Vatican, Cordelia assists with the spying and is trying to leave Italy in fear of her Jewish roots being discovered. She and Friedrich meet in her hotel and have a passionate affair, challenging for her in the circumstances, although he is not aware of her racial origins. She manages to escape and they meet, I thought a bit sentimentally, again in London post-war and no doubt continue their affair.
Good and substantial for a first novel.
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