Rome can be a dangerous city to write about. There’s so much culture and raw information tied up in the city’s streets, buildings, and monuments, that it’s easy for a writer to get distracted from the job in hand. In The Creator’s Map, author Emilio Calderón has trouble setting aside the guidebook and concentrating on the story.

The Creator\'s Map, by Emilio CalderonSet in Rome before, during, and after the Second World War, The Creator’s Map follows José Maria Hurtado, an architect staying at the Spanish Academy, as he finds himself drawn into the world of wartime espionage. He also falls for Montse, a girl whose family is sheltering at the Academy. His pursuit of her, and attempts to understand their subsequent relationship, provide the backbone of the novel. (The Creator’s Map of the title is essentially a MacGuffin to bring all the characters together.)

There are some good ideas here, as Hurtado and Montse are drawn into the world of espionage in wartime Rome, with its parallel realities and obscured truths, but while the characters come to life, their surroundings never quite make it. And while Emilio Calderón has clearly been inspired by the time he himself spent in the city, that inspiration doesn’t reach the novel.

Instead, the Rome of the past is pieced together from a string of factoids and pieces of trivia. Take for example this early scene in which the future lovers take their first walk together:

When we got to Piazza Navona we stopped in front of the Fontana dei Fiumi, Bernini’s most famous fountain.

“They say that the giants who represent the Nile and the Río de la Plata are shielding their eyes so as not to see Borromini’s church of Sant’Agnese in Agone,” Montse said, repeating a popular legend. “Apparently, there was great enmity between those two great artists.”

“Everybody tells that story, but it’s not true,” I said. “The fountain was built before the church. The giant who represents the Nile is covering his face because he doesn’t know where he comes from.”

…and so on. This kind of dialogue belongs to the “stilted exposition” school, except that what’s being exposed—at the cost of realism—has absolutely nothing to do with the story. And these conversations and observations crop up throughout at least the first half of the book. In the same vein, it isn’t necessary to know every road a character takes to get from A to B, and he should be able to drink a cappuccino without somebody “happening to mention” the origin of the word. These are the kind of pedantic trivialities one expects to find in self-published expat memoirs, rather than commercial thrillers; a good rule of thumb to avoid this sort of problem is ‘if it’s in the Rough Guide, don’t put it in your novel’.

There’s also nothing to fix Rome in the period: The mid-thirties Rome of The Creator’s Map could just as easily be Rome today, and when the Germans arrive, rather than attempt to evoke what must undoubtedly have been a hellish atmosphere (think Rome, Open City), Calderón seems to give up describing the city altogether. In place of a serious attempt to evoke the atmosphere of the doubly besieged city, he simply mentions one or two of the more famous atrocities. These stilted surroundings give the curious impression that the characters—who are themselves well realised—are floating slightly outside of space and time.

The story itself is a good one, and again the characters are convincing, and there’s enough there to provide an enjoyable, light summer read, but a little more imagination—as opposed to research—into the setting would have made for a better book.