Exclusive interview with author Christina Lynch discussing her CIA spy thriller set in 1956 Italy
by Gabrielle Pantera
“I spent most of my twenties in Italy,” says The Italian Party author Christina Lynch. “So, it’s also the place that shaped my adult sensibility. I think it seeped into my bones.
Italians seem to understand life in a way that the rest of us want to but don’t. They understand that life is short and should be enjoyed, that food is to be savored, that quality is more important than price. They value time, and community, beauty, the arts and intellectual life. They have a lot of empathy, and style without arrogance, which are qualities in short supply elsewhere these days.”
It’s 1956 and American newlyweds Scottie and Michael Messina have moved to Siena. Michael, who seems to have a normal life working for Ford in Italy, is really working for the CIA to make a mayoral election go the way the Americans want. Michael’s male lover Duncan is another secret he’s keeping from his wife. Scottie hires a local teenager Roberto to teach her Italian. When he disappears she tries to search for him. Nothing as is it seems.
“Why 1956?” says Lynch. “I picked it because it was a watershed year in the perception of communism in Europe. I was intrigued by the problem of how to convey that in fiction. It’s one thing to say things were not as great as you think in the 1950s and another to try to portray that in a way that’s entertaining and thought-provoking.”
Lynch researched the CIA extensively. She found Tim Weiner’s landmark book Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA ‘terrifically helpful’. Reading biographies was key to the era, she says with the standouts beging The Good Spy about Robert Ames, The Brothers about Allen and Foster Dulles and the two Sylvia Jukes Morris books about Clare Boothe Luce.
Lynch worked as a journalist in Milan for Fairchild Publications, publisher of M, W and Women’s Wear Daily. After moving to Los Angeles she wrote many episodes of television series, on the writing staff of Unhappily Ever After, Encore, Encore, and Wildfire.
Lynch’s first book was a riding manual in Italian, Il Cavallo da Fondo, which she wrote with her friend Franco Faggiani, also a novelist. As Magnus Flyte she wrote two books with another friend: City of Dark Magic and City of Lost Dreams.
Lynch was born in Massachusetts. She fell in love with the British horse world while living for a year in London at age 13. She lives in central California, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. She is currently writing a novel set in Italy during World War II.
Her website is www.christinalynchwriter.com. She’s active on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
The Italian Party by Christina Lynch. Hardcover: 336 pages, Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (March 20, 2018), Language: English. ISBN-13: 978-1250147837 $25.99
