Customer Reviews

City of Secrets: The Truth Behind the Murders at the Vatican

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John Follain investigates the deaths of three people in the heart of the Vatican, including a young soldier and the commander of the pope's famous Swiss Guards. The evidence he finds is neither surprising nor inconsistent with the original statement about the circumstances of the death as presented the Vatican. What's interesting is how he finds his evidence and how what was not said in the original inquiry led to the pursuit of a better explanation. In the process, Follain's story reads more like Robert Ludlum mystery or a Nelson DeMille travelogue, as he tracks down people, asks first innocent then probing questions, and effectively if incompletely re-constructs the story behind the deaths.

The Catholic Church and no less the Vatican has been severely damaged by its own secrecy and secrets. While some stories are not worth taking public, an obsession with secrecy produces more distrust than does the hard, candid side of the story. Homosexuality and Opus Dei, two sometimes tawdry secrets of the church, get an airing here, and the most saddening point is the self-illusion of secrecy the church seems intent on maintaining.

Follain also finds that the storied Swiss Guards are much more ceremonial window-dressing than an effective security or intelligence force. The members of this small cadre, the ones Follain contacts, most of them disillusioned or discontented, make a pretty strong case that some men join the Guards for the wrong reasons and the Guard itself seems to be used for the wrong reasons. Tradition seem more important than a clear mission.

It is the misunderstanding and misapplication that lie behind the story of the three deaths. Although the conclusion is not dramatic, neither is it melodramatic. And it is candid and honest, not a Hollywood screenplay, not a sanitized version, and not what the mother of one of the victim's might want. And, in the telling, there is something worth reading.

Putting it mildly, John Follain knows the territory when it comes to writing about the Vatican.
In addition to serving as a Rome-based correspondent for London's Sunday Times, he was able to get behind the scenes in Vatican City and conduct his own investigation into the shocking deaths of three people in the Vatican in 1998.
"No one can remember witnessing an episode of such violence inside the city-state," writes Follain.
City of Secrets, which reads like a fast-moving novel, is as much about the inner workings of the Vatican -- the Swiss Guard in particular -- as it is about the deaths themselves. It sounds strange to say this about a true story but, if I write more, I'll give the "plot" away.
Follain does a good job of bringing the main people in this matter to life, and his ultimate conclusions are, by turns, simpler and more complex than the Vatican's "official story".
this is a book you'll sail through, and at the end, you'll appreciate the author's investigative efforts as much as his writing ability. You'll also have a good sense of how conspiracy theories come into being, and grow, because of officialdom's reluctance to come clean.
-- Ed Halloran,

The problem with nonfiction crime writing is exactly what the genre implies --- there's no making things up. While authors like James Patterson or Sue Grafton can decide to swap murderers on a whim if something isn't working, true crime scribes such as Ann Rule or John Berendt have no such prerogative. They transcribe just the facts, ma'am. And that is the predicament with a book like John Follain's CITY OF SECRETS.

Follain, the Rome correspondent for London's Sunday Times, is a nonfiction veteran best known for chronicling Carlos the Jackal. In his latest effort, Follain investigates the May 1998 slayings of three people connected to the Swiss Guard, the pope's protectors: the unit's commander, his wife and a lance corporal. The official Vatican explanation, released within hours of the deaths, was that young Cédric Tornay murdered Colonel Alois Estermann and his wife, Gladys Meza Romero, in a fit of madness. While the Vatican effectively canonizes Estermann, it vilifies Tornay to the point of denying his mother access to the official inquiry.

Like any good reporter, Follain smelled a story when the Vatican dismissed the case so perfunctorily. He spent three years investigating "what really happened," interviewing current and former Swiss Guard members, Catholic clergy of all levels and forensic experts. Unfortunately, Follain did not seem to realize, upon the finish of his exhaustive research, that there wasn't much of a story.

The book is billed as the untold story behind an unsolved crime. Yet there aren't many revelations in Follain's book, other than the fact that the archaically constructed Catholic Church has not changed with the times. Perhaps Follain is a victim of bad timing --- this is not a true revelation to anyone who has followed the news for the past 12 months. In fact, considering the disturbing allegations of child molestation that recently rocked the church, Follain's indictment of a Swiss Guard system that overworks and underpays its emotionally unsatisfied employees seems a little quaint. So the Vatican forces its employees to go to church on Sunday. Swiss Guard enlistment is undertaken entirely by free will. Anyone who chooses to work for the pope should expect a little religious fervor.

Of course, Follain explores other points, too. He deconstructs the on-the-job abuse Tornay tolerated during his three-plus years of service. He discusses but never draws conclusions about an alleged affair between Tornay and Estermann. He never finds the smoking gun that makes crime novels (whether fiction or nonfiction) truly worth the read. Follain finds many facts but draws few compelling conclusions. That the Vatican did not want to cast the Pope's security force as a bunch of incompetent nutcases surely is not a surprise.

Follain devotes very little of the book to Estermann, instead concentrating on Tornay. Although the idealistic young man could certainly have been better dealt with during his tour of duty --- the last-minute denial of a medal he had apparently rightly earned is seen as the catalyst for the killings --- that still doesn't justify the murders. It's hard to buy Follain's position, almost from page one, that others also bear responsibility for Tornay's actions. For all intents and purposes, there was no pre-warning for his actions. No matter how much you hate your boss, there's no excuse for killing him. The guilt is Tornay's and Tornay's alone.

CITY OF SECRETS offers some interesting insights into the workings of the Vatican and the frailty of the once-dynamic pope. Unfortunately, Follain is determined to narrate the book while revealing very little of himself. What he does reveal is either bland or, at the most, a tad self-righteous. He's a competent writer but not a creative one. He should have either kept himself out of it or made himself more of a character. Perhaps if he had explained more about his interest in the Vatican and what he has surely seen during his years on the Roman beat, he would have found his hook. Without it, this remains a collection of facts sans revelation. It's a shame --- a big revelation in the final pages could have salvaged the effort. Too bad he couldn't have invented one. That's the trouble with nonfiction.

--- Reviewed by Toni Fitzgerald

It's so easy being a Catholic in the United States: priests who are your buddies, who stop over for Thanksgiving meals, know your kids by name, offer wholesome, practical advice for marriage and high school football, and who will have a Bud Light with you in the early autumn afternoon.

Not so easy when you're a young member of the Swiss Guards in the Vatican: priests are not your buddies, priests refuse to counsel you, your fellow Swiss guards insult your use of French and give you punishments when you don't deserve them. If you were a Swiss/French Guard, you might never come of age. You might be dead.

As we have found in some public schools throughout the USA, bullying can lead to mass murder when those being bullied see no other way out. Such is the situation in John Follain's CITY OF SECRETS. We Catholic readers have our eyes opened to the reality of the closed-society that is the Vatican.

If you want to keep your eyes closed to the severe problems within our beloved church, don't read this book.

If you think having a secret society, OPUS DEI, propagandizing side-by-side with the true mission of the church, then you absolutely must read the book. You have been sleeping as have I.

Be prepared to be shocked. Or, have the politicizing and manipulations found in the American church's pedophile scandal already opened your eyes wide?

by Larry Rochelle, author of HOME SCHOOLED.

The story shocked the world -- the commander of the Swiss Guard, a young Guardsman and the commander's wife, a former model, were found dead in the commander's apartment. All had been shot.
It was the most gruesome violence in the Vatican since the Middle Ages...Doubts about the Vatican version, expressed in screaming headlines, began almost as soon as the ink dried on the official report, and John Follain, who once covered the Vatican for Reuters, began his own investigation.
It took him more than three years, trips to a half-dozen countries and enough cloak-and-dagger stuff to fill a spy novel. The result is not a surprise solution but an indictment: It's a little like Perry Mason, with his last-minute bombshells, giving way to Columbo, plodding doggedly along, digging up secrets and fitting them together.
In the end, "Secrets" is an account of the way an institution closed to outside scrutiny, obsessed with secrecy and hostile to contradiction, protects itself in times of crisis.
It starts with information itself, a currency that is tightly-controlled and spent very carefully in the smallest nation in the world. Rivalries, jealousies, fears and egos collide and collude, and, as Follain discovered, collaborate when under fire.
He did manage to talk to some interesting characters at the Vatican, some with limited access to the Pope and other people who really count.
Out of these conversation, Follain put together a picture of a demoralised, unprepared Swiss Guard, a Pope weakened and isolated and a bureaucracy driven by self-interest and ambition.
The Vatican's version of events was a piece of hasty business. Follain's judgement, reached more leisurely and painstakingly, is a damning, but not in the dark and devious ways that conspiracy buffs expected.
-- Bill Bell, New York Daily News

In that it gives a look at some other murders outside of the mysterious death of John Paul I, this is a refreshing book. Yet, since it does not invlove a Pope it is likely to suffer unfairly from less interest. I recommend you not pass it up. An alternative is Lucien Gregoire's "Murder in the Vatican" which takes one on a methodical imvestigation of the murder of eight men which combination was the leadership of the progressive movement in Church - including the 'murders' of John Paul I and Paul VI. That all of these men died mysteriously within a few months of each other itself would arouse ones suspicions - but Gregoire offers much more than just that. I would recommend you buy these books as a package.

A good and thorough job of investigative reporting but unfortunately for the author and the reader it ends where it begins. There's always a "story" behind a murder/suicide but this one turns out to be not very interesting. The fact that it took place in the Vatican created the headlines but beyond that its not much of a story although there are a lot of great characters. There was no real cover-up on the part of the Vatican except for them not being more open about what the motivation for the event might have been.

No doubt that plenty of people around the Vatican will not like to see their names publicized around this event, but Vatican intrigue is as old as the papacy.

Kudos to the author for showing great determination in tracking people down and getting into the Vatican. It's just too bad he had to conclude that it was what it appeared to be from the beginning.

This book starts out really promising. Unfortunately it's only a promise unfulfilled. Even the title hints at some explosive secret. Unfortunately in a city filled with secrets it seems he found the only boring one. *Spoiler Alert* He found that in a city of men there might be *gasp* homosexuals. After that discovery it's all downhill. I had to force myself to read the last half of the book after that it was obvious nothing more shocking was to be had. It's not that it's poorly written, it isn't(in fact I'll be buying his book on Carlos the Jackal). I like the writing style it's just that it should have made a long news magazine article not a full length book.

Very well researched and documented.

Mr Follain again displays his considerable and admirable literary talents.

He again presents a factual true crime story yet makes it as enthralling, interesting and as absorbing as any novel.

Highly recommend.

Also anxiously anticipating Mr Follain's book about the horrific and senseless murder of Meredith Kercher.

The crime that convicted felon Amanda Knox and her lover Rafaelle Sollecito were initially unanimously convicted of committing along with Rudy Guede.

The strength of John Follain's book, based on his four-year investigation, is that we end up with a firm understanding of why Tornay did it. City of Secrets is both superb journalism and an outstanding example of forensic psychology.
Secondhand investigations of sensational crimes are often nothing more than instant books. However, Follain not only took the time to contribute something of worth to the canon of crime journalism but also exposed weaknesses in the Vatican that need addressing. In this case it is the fact that the Swiss Guard, supposedly responsible for protecting the Pope, are nothing more than toy soldiers -- Dennis Chute, The Edmonton Journal