What We Buried by Robert Rotenberg
“The war is over for you, but it has never ended for many of us here. We have buried the bodies, not the memories.”
What We Buried (Simon & Schuster), the bestselling seventh Detective Ari Greene novel, by Canadian author Robert Rotenberg dives into two cold cases, dark family secrets, and a gruesome event pulled straight from history. From modern Toronto to Nazi-occupied Italy, Rotenberg takes readers on an impeccably researched thrill ride with themes that reverberate through history into the present.
Revisiting a Cold Case
Ten years after his brother’s murder, Toronto homicide detective Daniel Kennicott decides it’s time to chase down the one lead he never explored — that might just take him to his brother’s killer. Shot by an unknown assailant on his way to share crucial information about his parents’ deaths with Daniel, Michael’s murder remains a mystery. Had he gotten too close to the truth? Was the murder a plan to silence him? And is the assailant connected to the car “accident” that killed his parents years before?
The one thread Daniel Kennicott is finally ready to unravel is a trip his mother and brother had each planned — though Michael was killed before he made it. With his late mother’s travel diary in hand, photographs, notes, and a determination to get some answers about his family’s deaths, Kennicott takes off to the medieval hill town of Gubbio, Italy.
It is not long before he finds himself face to face with Gubbio’s harrowing history. On the 22 of June in 1944, “[forty] innocent people in Gubbio were murdered by the Nazis,” in an event known as I Quaranta. The massacre still haunts survivors in Gubbio, and many are unwilling to speak about the immeasurable loss they faced at the hands of the Nazis occupying their town.
His detective mind at work, Kennicott begins to wonder if there’s another reason his mother and Michael were drawn to Gubbio. “What was it about this tragedy, this place, that struck him so deeply? That made him so sure that this was somehow linked to Michael’s murder? And perhaps his parents’ death?”
Soon, Kennicott’s personal history is tearing him in two different directions, toward a past he can celebrate, and another, darker past that he is on the verge of uncovering…
Compulsively Readable Historical Thriller
From car chases and detective work to kidnapping and a brutal historical event, What We Buried is at once terrifying and compulsively readable. The novel has a wide scope, jumping from points of view: Kennicott’s discoveries in Gubbio, the detectives’ re-examination of his parents’ deaths, Detective Ari Greene’s case work and his father’s story of surviving the Holocaust, and undercover agents working the cases from another angle. Each detail is carefully plotted, and the detective work that ties it all together is a reminder of Robert Rotenberg’s expertise as a criminal lawyer.
Of course, such a delicate and historically important topic required serious research and firsthand accounts from people with direct connections to the story told in What We Buried. Robert Rotenberg spoke with “Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren, World War II veterans, Morse code experts and spies, and the many citizens in the Italian hill town of Gubbio.” He shares stories of freedom fighters, brave martyrs, and those who survived the Nazis’ brutality against all odds. Not a detail is spared, even the parts of personal and global history that are hard to confront — giving the novel a fresh and tangible feel.
Inspires Thought-Provoking Questions
What We Buried asks the tough questions of both its characters and readers. As Kennicott faces the truth of his history and Gubbio’s, and as Ari Greene’s daughter hears her grandfather’s tale of survival, everyone is forced to confront their own history and morality. Is it up to us to apologize for the sins of our ancestors? Can we heal from our history, even if justice isn’t possible?
Robert Rotenberg has penned a novel with a rich and weighty history that you will never forget reading. One can only hope, with tension building to a climactic ending, that this isn’t the end of Kennicott, Greene and the town of Gubbio’s story and that there is more still to be told.
On the final pages of the book, Rotenberg leaves readers with the names of the Forty Martyrs in Gubbio. Beneath it is a quote, “Pass on the memory so as not to repeat the brutality of the past.” What We Buried does exactly that.
About Robert Rotenberg:
Robert Rotenberg is the author of several bestselling novels, including Old City Hall, The Guilty Plea, Stray Bullets, Stranglehold, Heart of the City, and Downfall. He is a criminal lawyer in Toronto with his firm Rotenberg, Shidlowski, Jesin. He is also a television screenwriter and a writing teacher. Visit him at robertrotenberg.com or follow him on Twitter @RobertRotenberg and Facebook @RobertRotenberg.
