I recently finished The Pompeian Betrayal and wanted to share a few thoughts with you.

When I first began reading your books, I assumed that someone who wrote so extensively and knowledgeably about the Vatican must have a strong religious background. I was therefore surprised to discover that you are agnostic. That struck a chord with me. I was raised Protestant and went to Sunday school when I was young, but as the years passed, my own experiences led me away from religious belief. I have great respect for those who find meaning and comfort in faith, but it has never played that role in my own life.

Perhaps that is one reason I have been so surprised by how interested I have become in the history of the Vatican through your novels. It is a world I never expected to find particularly compelling, yet I now find myself wanting to know more about it. Just as importantly, Father Michael Dominic and the people around him have become familiar companions. Following their lives from book to book is now part of the pleasure of reading the series.

The Pompeian Betrayal gave me plenty to think about. Beneath the suspense and intrigue are some genuinely philosophical questions about human nature, power, morality, and the choices people make when their principles are tested. I particularly enjoyed the fact that these larger ideas were incorporated into the story without allowing them to overwhelm the plot.

I was also pleased that, despite the scars left by everything the characters endure, good ultimately prevails. I think there is something valuable in that. A good thriller can take us into some very dark places, but I still want to finish a story with a sense that courage, decency, and hope matter.

One theme that stayed with me afterward was the danger of condemning an entire institution because of the actions of individuals within it. Whether we are talking about a church, a bank, a government, or any other powerful organization, institutions are ultimately made up of people. Some use their positions honorably; others abuse them. There is an old observation that if you really want to discover someone’s character, give that person power. The Pompeian Betrayal illustrates that idea particularly well.

Another pleasure was seeing the continuing development of Michael, Hana, and the other recurring characters. After spending several books with them, their personal journeys have become nearly as important to me as the historical mysteries themselves.

One thing does puzzle me: I see many readers awarding the book high star ratings without actually writing anything about why they enjoyed it. That’s unfortunate, because I find it interesting to hear what other readers noticed in a story and whether they came away thinking about the same things I did.

Once again, you have managed to combine history, intrigue, ideas, and suspense into a story that entertained me while also giving me something to consider after I finished the final page.

I am very much looking forward to the next German edition in the series. The Pompeian Betrayal certainly earns five stars from me.

Set against the turbulent years leading up to the Civil War, the novel takes readers into an America where the question of slavery was no longer something the country could postpone confronting. McDonald brings that period to life not simply through historical events, but through people forced to make difficult choices about freedom, conscience, loyalty, and courage.

What particularly impressed me is the sense of historical authenticity. The world of the novel feels lived in rather than reconstructed for our benefit. The history provides the foundation, but it never overwhelms the characters or the story. That balance is difficult to achieve in historical fiction, and it’s one of the things I appreciate most about the book.

Readers of my own novels know how much I enjoy stories in which the past becomes something immediate and consequential rather than merely a backdrop. On Free Ground approaches history in a very different setting from my Vatican thrillers, but it shares that conviction: history is ultimately about human beings making choices, often without knowing what those choices will eventually mean.

If historical fiction is among your interests—or if you simply enjoy a compelling story grounded in a fascinating and deeply consequential period of American history—I think On Free Ground is well worth your time.

Highly recommended. Publication date November 1, 2026.

Every so often a book starts with a question I can't shake. This one began with a simple accounting problem. When Alexander VI died in August 1503—Cesare bedridden with the same fever that killed his father, the cardinals already circling—the Borgia treasury was among the most coveted in Europe. Within weeks, much of it was gone. Some of that dispersal is documented: seized by rivals, spent on Cesare's dwindling army, quietly reclaimed by families the Borgias had bled. But there are gaps in the record that historians have argued over for five centuries. Money and relics don't simply evaporate. Someone moved them.

That "someone" became the Sisters of the Sacred Vigil—a sodality founded in the chaos of 1503, still keeping its promise more than five hundred years later, and led today by a woman who learned her tradecraft in Italian military intelligence rather than a convent. I wanted an antagonist who wasn't a villain in the cartoon sense, but a keeper of an oath so old that its original purpose had long since curdled into something else.

And of course this was the book where Michael and Hana finally marry—at her villa in Èze, on the Côte d'Azur, with Karl standing as best man, Sister Teri as bridesmaid, and Cardinal Severino coming out of his monastery to officiate. I've had that scene in my head for years. Writing it while a conspiracy closed in around the wedding party was the most fun I've had at the keyboard in a long while.

So, a few things I'm curious about:

1. The Sisters. Mother Superior Agnese Visconti believes she is protecting something sacred. Did you find her sympathetic at any point—or did her military past make her impossible to trust from the start? Would you have preferred a more conventionally sinister order?

2. The wedding. Twelve books is a long courtship. Did the marriage feel earned? And for readers who followed the papal decree allowing Michael to remain a priest and Prefect—does that arrangement work for you as the series moves forward, or does it raise questions you'd like to see the next books confront?

3. The ledger and the reliquary. The investigation turns on a hidden account book and a relic that shouldn't exist. I try to keep these plausible—every archive in Rome has objects whose provenance is a shrug. Which discovery in the book made you stop and think "that could actually be real"? Which strained your belief?

4. The clock. Longtime readers may have noticed this is the first book I've written using 24-hour time throughout. Did you notice? Did it change the feel of the pacing, or was it invisible?

And one open question, because I ask it of myself after every book: what do you think the Sisters were really guarding? Not the object—the idea behind it.

I read every reply here. Pull up a chair.

—Gary