The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths

Southern Italy provides setting for archaeologist detective mystery

Much of The Dark Angel
is set in Italy

I decided to read The Dark Angel, by Elly Griffiths, because a lot of the story is set in Italy.

It was the first of her novels that I have ever considered, and having read and enjoyed the book, which is number 10 in the Dr Ruth Galloway series, I intend to read more by this author, starting  at the beginning, so that I can follow the fortunes of her main character.

Ruth is an archaeology professor at a university in Norfolk and a single Mum. She has recently lost her mother, and her love affair with Detective Chief Inspector Nelson, who fathered her daughter, Kate, is over. He is now trying to make a go of his relationship with his wife, Michelle, who has just become pregnant again in her mid-forties.

When Ruth, who is an expert on old bones, is invited to give her opinion on some remains uncovered in Lazio in southern Italy, she welcomes the opportunity to get away for a while with her daughter, Kate. She invites her friend, Shona, who has a small son, Louis, to accompany them on the trip.

Ruth has previously worked with the Italian archaeologist, Angelo Morelli, who has asked for her help, and she once had a brief romance with him. He has now called on her to assess the remains he has uncovered because of her growing reputation as an expert, which he hopes will create more interest for the TV company he has invited to film the dig.

When Ruth and Shona arrive with their children in Castello degli Angeli, a fictitious hilltop town in Lazio, they are taken to stay in Angelo’s late grandfather’s apartment, where they find the message ‘foreigners go home’ has been daubed in Italian on the wall outside.

Ruth discovers that the town has wartime secrets and that the old grudges between long dead fascists and partisans persist between local families.

Author Elly Griffiths, the creator
of the Ruth Galloway Mysteries 

Also, not everyone in the area is happy about Angelo’s dig and attempts are being made to sabotage it.

After a small earthquake, Ruth’s former lover, DCI Nelson also arrives in Lazio, ostensibly because he is concerned about his daughter, Kate, but he is also clearly jealous about Ruth working with Angelo.

The earthquake has caused more bones to be uncovered in the town, which leads to long-buried secrets and resentments coming to the surface. After there is a murder in Castello degli Angeli, Ruth and Nelson join forces to solve it.

Although some characters from the first nine Ruth Galloway novels also play their part in this story,  Elly Griffiths makes it possible for the reader to work out who everybody is and become engaged with the plot and Ruth’s personal issues, even if they have never read the previous books in the series.

She also skilfully manages to incorporate a plotline involving one of Nelson’s old cases back in Norfolk, which has an impact on his family back at home and adds to the drama.

As a passionate Italophile, I enjoyed the descriptions of Lazio food and hospitality and the way the setting and atmosphere of the region was evoked by the author. I would recommend the book to anyone who has not yet read a crime novel by Elly Griffiths.

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Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna

Wine and murder mix in front of a smoking volcano

The second book by Mario Giordano
in his Auntie Poldi detective series

Auntie Poldi embarks on another murder investigation in this second book in the series, but the only clue she has to go on is the picture on a wine label.

According to her anonymous German nephew who narrates the story, Auntie Poldi knows a thing or two about wine and has a nose for a good one. This particular bottle of Sicilian wine was used as a murder weapon and so she also sniffs out a new case to investigate.

She goes to the vineyard where the wine was produced to see if she can find out anything that might link it to the murder and, after enthusiastically taking up the offer of sampling the vintage and having rather too much of it, she comes across a dead body among the vines on her way home.

So, Auntie Poldi is off on another adventure in sunny Sicily, where she has gone to see out her days with the intention of drinking herself to death while enjoying a sea view.

After being widowed, the glamorous 60-years old left her native Munich to live in Torre Achirafi on the east coast of Sicily. But her retirement plans were interrupted when she found the body of her odd job man, Valentino, lying on the beach with his face blown away.

She promised him there and then that she would find his killer and avenge his death. The story is related by her nephew, who frequently comes to stay with her, in the first book in the series, Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions.

During her investigation, she finds romance with the handsome Chief Inspector Montana, with whom she also forms an uneasy investigative partnership.

Mario Giordano was born
in Germany to Italian parents

It is during a cosy evening at her villa with Montana at the beginning of the second book that Poldi sees his pictures from a crime scene taken after the brutal murder of a female district attorney.

When Montana admits he is not making much progress with finding the woman’s killer,  Poldi decides to visit the vineyard where the bottle of wine that was used to murder the lawyer was produced.

She cannot resist competing against Montana to prove that her previous success wasn’t a fluke and that she is a better detective than him.

She is assisted in her investigation by her good friends, Padre Paolo, the parish priest, and the owner of the local bar, the ‘sad’ Signora Cocuzza.

Also helping her out with the case are her colourful Sicilian family by marriage, her three sisters-in-law, and her brother in law and his dog, Totti.

Add lots of Sicilian food and Etna wine, fortune tellers who can give you the evil eye, plenty of handsome men, even if Poldi suspects some of them as being mafiosi, and the beautiful backdrop of a smoking volcano under a blue sky. As usual, Mario Giordano serves it all up with style and humour.

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Death in the High City

Successful decade for crime novel set in Bergamo

Death in the High City, the first detective novel written in English to be set in Bergamo in northern Italy, was published ten years ago this summer.

To mark the tenth anniversary, East Wind Publishing have issued a new edition of the mystery with a front cover showing Bergamo’s Via Colleoni at night. The historic street in the Città Alta, Bergamo’s upper town, features as a key location in the novel. 

Referred to as un romanzo giallo in Italian, Death in the High City centres on the investigation into the death of an English woman staying in Bergamo while working on a biography of the opera composer Gaetano Donizetti, who was born and died in the city. 

The dead woman had been living in an apartment in Bergamo’s Città Alta and much of the action takes place within the walls of the upper town. 

The novel was the first in a series to feature the characters of Kate Butler, a freelance journalist, and Steve Bartorelli, a retired Detective Chief Inspector, who is of partly Italian descent. 

At first the local police do not believe there is enough evidence to open a murder enquiry and so journalist Kate Butler, the victim’s cousin, arrives in Bergamo to try to get some answers about her relative’s death, on behalf of her elderly aunt, who is too frail to make the journey herself. 

Kate visits many of the places in Bergamo with Donizetti connections and her enquiries also take her out to Lago d’Iseo and into the countryside around San Pellegrino Terme. 

But after her own life is threatened and there has been another death in the Città Alta, her partner, Steve Bartorelli, joins her in Bergamo to help unravel the mystery and trap the killer. 

The reader can enjoy Bergamo’s wonderful architecture and scenery from the comfort of their own armchair, while savouring the many descriptions in the novel of local food and wine. 

After the novel was published, Author Val Culley was invited to present Death in the High City to an audience in San Pellegrino Terme in Lombardy, and sign copies of the book, as a guest at the fifth anniversary celebrations of Bergamo Su e Giù, a group of independent tour guides based in the city. During the evening, she was presented with a book about San Pellegrino Terme by the town’s mayor. 

Val Culley signing copies of Death in the High
City for students at a college near Bergamo

She also made two appearances on Bergamo TV to talk about the novel with presenter Teo Mangione during his daily breakfast programme. During one of her visits to the studios, she presented a copy of the book to the Mayor of Bergamo, Giorgio Gori, who took office the year the novel was published. 

Val was invited to Bergamo for a further visit by the Cambridge Institute to give a talk about Death in The High City to a group of 80 Italian teachers of English and to sign copies for them. 

She has also formally presented a copy of Death in the High City to the Biblioteca Civica (Civic Library), a beautiful 16th century building in white marble, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, situated in Piazza Vecchia, a location that features frequently in the novel. 

She was later invited to give a talk about Death in the High City at a sixth form college in Zogno, a comune in Valle Brembana set in beautiful countryside in the hills above Bergamo. 

Another highlight was when the New York Times mentioned to Death in the High City in a travel feature they were running about Bergamo. 

The novel came out in Kindle format in May 2014 and a paperback version was released in July 2014. It has since sold copies in the UK, Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, America, Australia, Canada, and Mexico. 

Death in the High City will interest readers who enjoy the ‘cosy’ crime fiction genre, or like detective stories with an Italian setting.

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Paganini’s Ghost

A Giovanni Castiglione novel by Paul Adam

Paganini's Ghost features the
luthier-detective Giovanni Castiglione

Paganini’s Ghost is another enjoyable musical mystery set in Cremona in Lombardy, from Paul Adam, the author of The Rainaldi Quarter (first published as Sleeper). 

In this novel, the historical figure of virtuoso violinist Niccolo Paganini is at the centre of the story. Paganini’s famous violin, Il Cannone - the cannon - is kept in a museum in Genoa and is only ever played at special concerts by top virtuoso violinists who have won international competitions.

A young Russian virtuoso violinist, Yevgeny Ivanov, has been given the honour of playing Il Cannone in the cathedral in Cremona, the city where Il Cannone was originally made by the luthier Guarneri del Gesù.

When the violin suffers slight damage, Ivanov turns to retired Cremonese luthier Giovanni Castiglione for help with detecting the fault and, as a result, the two men become friends.

Castiglione attends Ivanov’s concert in the cathedral and the subsequent reception at the town hall. 

The next day, his friend, the detective Antonio Guastafeste, is called in to investigate the death of a Parisian art dealer, whose body was found in his hotel room the day after the concert.

He co-opts Castiglione to aid his investigation, with the permission of the police, because the art dealer had a fragment of sheet music in his wallet that had belonged to Ivanov. 

The real Il Cannone, as played by Paganini in the
19th century, is kept in a museum in Genoa

The mild-mannered retired luthier once again finds himself on the trail of a murderer and he is faced with trying to unravel a musical mystery that has been unsolved for more than a century.

Castiglione and Guastafeste discover a tantalising tangle of love, deception, and greed, and they follow a trail that leads back to the great Paganini and his lover, Elisa Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon, and also involves Catherine the Great of Russia.

The pair must solve a mystery that dates back more than a century to give them the answer to this modern-day murder.

Paganini’s Ghost - book two of Adams’s Cremona Mysteries trilogy - is packed with fascinating historical and musical details and also provides the reader with a gripping mystery that will keep them turning the pages.

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Uniform Justice

A Commissario Brunetti novel by Donna Leon

Uniform Justice is Leon's
12th Brunetti mystery

I found this to be the saddest of all the Commissario Brunetti novels that I have reviewed so far.

Brunetti and his officers are investigating the death of a young military cadet who is found hanged in the barracks of an elite military academy in Venice.

Although Brunetti and his wife, Paola, have never had much sympathy for the Italian armed forces, the Commissario cannot help but feel sorry for the young man, who is close in age to his own son, and he also has some sympathy for his parents.

But he is irritated by the arrogant, high-handed attitude of the boy’s teachers and fellow students at the academy and the apparent unwillingness of the boy’s family to open up to him.

He is not prepared to just accept that the boy’s death is suicide without investigating the circumstances thoroughly and he eventually uncovers the truth, unpalatable though it is found to be.

I would not want to put anyone off from reading Uniform Justice, particularly if you are reading Donna Leon’s Brunetti novels in order, but it is the bleakest of her books that I have read so far. 

However, it is always a pleasure to read the author’s descriptions of Venice, which is now her adopted home city, and I look forward to moving on to read the next novel in the series. 

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The Medici Murders by David Hewson

Carnevale chaos served up with a generous helping of history

The Medici Murders is set in
Venice during Carnevale

This novel set in Venice has a very likeable main character, a retired archivist named Arnold Clover, who suddenly finds himself having to help the Carabinieri with a murder investigation.

Arnold and his wife had planned to live out their retirement years in Venice and had managed to buy a small apartment there, but on the eve of their departure from England to start their new life, Arnold’s wife unexpectedly died because of a deteriorating health condition.

With his house sold and nothing left for him in London, Arnold sadly had to make the move alone. But after a year, he has settled in and, although still missing his wife, he has made some friends in Venice.

But then his peace is shattered when ghosts from his past arrive in la Serenissima and bring their troubles to his door.

David Hewson’s novel, The Medici Murders, which was published in 2022, is set during the annual Carnevale, a time of year when tourists roam the chilly calle of Venice wearing bizarre costumes.

Arnold, as a British expat, is commandeered by Carabinieri officer Valentina Fabbri to help him solve the murder of a well-known British TV historian, Marmaduke Godolphin.

Although Arnold has never thought of Godolphin as a friend, he knows of him because Godolphin had been a tutor at Arnold’s Cambridge college. Arnold had also recently been hired by him, via a third party, a Venetian archivist he has met, to go through some historical papers Godolphin has acquired.

Among the papers, Godolphin believed there would be previously unknown information about the murder of fugitive assassin Lorenzino de’ Medici in Venice, exactly 500 years before.

With Godolphin on the trip are other people Arnold remembers from his Cambridge days, who had been part of Godolphin’s exclusive circle of budding historians, while Arnold had been a mere looker-on.

The Medici Murders was
published in 2022

When Godolphin is found murdered in the exact spot Lorenzino de’ Medici had been killed in, the Carabinieri demand Arnold’s assistance, because the people who have accompanied Godolphin to Venice have now become their main suspects.

This novel will appeal to readers of Donna Leon and Philip Gwynne Jones, or to anyone who enjoys a crime novel set in Venice with a generous sprinkling of Italian history. 

David Hewson is a former journalist with The Times, The Sunday Times and The Independent. He has written more than 30 novels, including a series of crime novels set in Rome. He now lives near Canterbury in Kent.

The novel is a whodunit, but it also explores Arnold’s personal tragedy. After the retired archivist arrives at the solution to the mystery, he has the glimpse of a chance of a relationship with someone who never looked twice at him when they were at Cambridge together.

But Arnold shows his independent spirit and there is a surprise for the reader at the end. Let us hope David Hewson writes more about the adventures in Venice of this intelligent, retired archivist.

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Sleeper by Paul Adam

Musical mystery set in a quiet city in Lombardy

Sleeper has also been published
as The Rainaldi Quartet

As a lover of crime fiction, I enjoy a well plotted mystery, and it is even better if the novel also has an evocatively described Italian setting. In Sleeper, Paul Adam brings Cremona to life for the reader. It is a city that is perhaps not as well known as Milan, Bergamo, or Mantua, but like those other famous cities in Lombardy, Cremona has a long and fascinating history.

Cremona has also become synonymous in people’s minds with violin making and, without forcing too much knowledge on the reader, Adam imparts a lot of the history and tradition of this craft during the novel.

The story begins in the countryside outside Cremona when four men meet at a house for their monthly chance to play music together as a string quartet. One of them is a priest, another a policeman, and the other two are expert luthiers, the craftsmen who make stringed instruments.

After enjoying music, wine, and laughter together, they disperse one after the other. But when one of the luthiers does not arrive back at his home as expected, the other luthier, Gianni Castiglione, and the policeman, Antonio Guastafeste, go to look for him at his workshop in Cremona, where they find him dead, having been stabbed with one of his own chisels.

It is a mystery to them why anyone would want to kill the elderly luthier, Tomaso Rainaldi, who was not particularly well off and was liked by everyone who knew him, The only clue that Castiglione and Guastafeste can go on is that Rainaldi seems to have become involved in a quest to track down a rare and fabled violin made by one of the famous Cremonese master luthiers. An instrument, if it exists, that could potentially be worth millions.

The book was so well written it was a delight to read. In Castiglione, the novel has an unusual protagonist and amateur sleuth because the luthier is no longer young. Although he is semi-retired, he still practises the art of violin making, and mending, at his home and he has an expert knowledge of the instrument. Therefore, Guastafeste persuades his superiors to allow his friend to join the official police investigation.

The action in Sleeper takes place against the 
backcloth of the mediaeval city of Cremona

Castiglione has some long shadows from his past and reveals his flaws to the reader as the novel progresses. The story is told in the first person and the reader can get inside his head and know what Castiglione is thinking at times. Yet Adam succeeds in making the reader get behind Castiglione and to want to urge him on in his quest to find out who murdered his friend.

Castiglione and Guastafeste hope that following the trail leading to the famous violin will help them  unmask the murderer and so they take up Rainaldi’s mission themselves, retracing his recent travels to Milan, Venice, and other interesting places in northern Italy, as well as visiting England briefly.

Paul Adam has written 13 novels for adults and a trilogy of thrillers for children. A former journalist, he now lives in Sheffield, but he has worked in Rome and travelled widely in Italy. He plays the violin himself and as a result became interested in how violins are made.

He chose Cremona as his setting because it was home to the masters of violin making, Stradivari, Guarneri, and Amati. It has been the centre of violin making for centuries and is still a city of luthiers. He said in an interview that he did his research in Cremona in person to make sure he described his locations and the atmosphere of the city accurately.

Sleeper was first published in 2004 by Endeavour Publishing, but was republished under the title of The Rainaldi Quartet by Macmillan in 2007.  There are another two books by Adam making up a Cremona trilogy, Paganini’s Ghost and The Hardanger Riddle.

I am packing a copy of Paganini’s Ghost to take on holiday with me in a few days, when I will be visiting, guess where, Cremona! Can’t wait to read it.

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