Alta Profondità

Cliccate sulle immagini per vederle a pieno schermo.

"In this book I have used my knowledge of the sea to explore unknown reaches deep below the surface in order to tell the story of a terrifying secret concealed in the wreck of the most powerful battleship ever seen in Mediterranean waters" Folco Quilici.

A ship, a mystery. Marine researchers Marco Arnei and Sarah Morasky pool their courage and their fears to confront the perils of the sea and the depths of human evil.
In his new novel, Folco Quilici tells the story of an incredible, but very plausible adventure that begins with the sinking of the Italian battleship Roma by German bombers off the coast of Sardinia on September 9, 194 .

Fifty years later, deep sea daredevils Arnei and Morasky are commissioned to investigate the controversial events that culminated in the tragic sinking. Before long they find themselves fighting an unscrupulous enemy intent on learning the secret guarded by the huge steel wreck one thousand meters below the surface.

In a succession of unexpected events, the investigators' mission clashes with the plans of a terrorist group seeking to build a weapon of mass destruction. The drama unfolds against a backdrop of tempestuous seas and the sinister fascination of the depths. Sheer adventure at its very best.

THE BOOK OF THE WEEK by Pasquale Chessa (literary critic for PANORAMA - a leading Italian weekly news magazine)

The wreck of the Roma

The Italian battleship Roma was the most formidable warship in the Mediterranean. What was it doing off Asinara in the Western reaches of the Strait of Bonifacio on September 9, 1943, the day after Italy surrendered to the Allies? If Admiral Bergamini was under orders to deliver his fleet to the Allies where was he going after he left the La Spezia naval base? He should have been heading for Malta with his guns lowered under the black pennant of unconditional surrender. Was his real destination the Island of Maddalena where the Italian King and his Prime Minister, Pietro Badoglio, were said to have taken refuge from the Germans? The truth will never be known. A German squadron of 15 Dornier 217K bombers sighted the cruiser and attacked it without meeting the slightest resistance. Roma broke in two and sank leaving only a handful of survivors. These are the historical facts. The questions they provoke have never been answered by the Italian Navy

Based on the fate of the Roma, Folco Quilici's novel about the sea and war breaks new ground in Italian fiction, reveling in a cocktail of Arab spies, Bostonian scientists, German commandos, Islamic fanatics, underwater archeologists and prostitution on the high seas.
Commissioned to seek out the truth about the ill-fated warship, Professor Marco Arnei is unaware that his mysterious backers are convinced the Roma was sunk by the prototype of a secret weapon devised to turn the tide of war in favor of the Third Reich. In league with a team of American scientists of Syrian origin, they believe molecular analysis of a sample of the battleship's 350 millimeter-thick armored plating will provide the key to a clean nuclear device that, in the hands of Arab Fundamentalists, can be used to hold the world to ransom .

The plot unfolds against a backdrop of psychological skirmishing, brutal firefights, raging storms and moral dilemmas as Quilici takes us beneath the waves of the Sardinian Sea into the bowels of the wreck of the Roma.
Using his masterful gift as a storyteller, Quilici presents scientific data in the guise of sheer adventure, placing the reader at the controls of the Deep Rover mini-submarines, the high-tech components of a compelling story that culminates in a double, suspense-filled finale .