A review by emilyrjohns
Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan

3.0

The mediocre writing aside, this could be a decent work of WWII fiction for the storyline alone. The history of Italy during WWII is rarely told because of the country’s precarious position as an axis power. However, I have an extremely hard time believing that all of these things happened to or were witnessed by Pino Lella. A really hard time. To me, he is a grandpa that decided to embellish his life in Italy during WWII once he was an old man. Conveniently after most of the people that could verify his story had died. According to Lella he witnessed Mussolini’s death (after visiting him in his villa multiple times), he heard Hitler on the phone, he was never shot despite being shot at numerous times, he became close friends with Gary Cooper, he avoided being killed on Pan Am Flight 103, he even told James Dean not to buy the Porsche that killed him because he wasn’t ready for that much power. As soon as I was done reading it, I started searching for validation of the truthfulness of this book. I got in deep. So many comment threads...and I must say I am impressed with the amount of research people have done to disprove aspects of this story. There is a caveat at the beginning of the book about details being added, but this goes beyond small embellishments. Perhaps I am wrong and all of these incredible things truly did happen to Pino Lella, but I remain unconvinced.