A good detective story taking place in a beautiful part of Italy is a real treat for people who enjoy reading crime mysteries and also happen to love Italy. Use this website to find out more about the locations, the lifestyle and the food and the wine experienced by the characters created by your favourite authors.

20201127

A Sea of Troubles

A Commissario Brunetti novel by Donna Leon
 

After a fisherman and his son are murdered and left on their boat, which is then set on fire and sunk, Commissario Brunetti has to go to the island of Pellestrina in the Venetian lagoon to investigate the crime.

But the Commissario and his Sergeant, Vianello, find themselves up against a brick wall in the close-knit community of Pellestrina, where the tough fishermen and their downtrodden wives stubbornly avoid cooperating with the police.

The lagoon can be treacherous in bad weather

The beautiful and stylish Signorina Elettra, the Vice-Questore’s secretary, reveals she has a cousin who lives on the island and volunteers to visit her for a few days to see what she can find out.

Despite his misgivings about her safety, Brunetti finds he can’t dissuade her and she takes some holiday from the Questura to go to the island.

Brunetti and Vianello continue to pursue their enquiries officially, returning to Pellestrina, which is south of the Lido out in the lagoon, in the police launch, piloted by the long-serving Bonsuan.

Meanwhile, Signorina Elettra enjoys her holiday, while maintaining her cover, but finds herself falling for a handsome stranger she is introduced to in a bar.

The atmosphere of Pellestrina, which is only a few kilometres from Venice, but where the inhabitants don’t even speaks the same dialect as the Venetians, is evoked well by Donna Leon. She displays her extensive knowledge of the island, which is just a short trip across the water from Venice, where she lives.

But the weather in this part of Italy in the spring can change quickly and as Brunetti is getting closer to the truth, a terrible storm descends, which puts them all at risk.

A Sea of Troubles won the Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Silver Dagger in 2000.

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20201110

August Heat


An Inspector Montalbano Mystery by Andrea Camilleri

Montalbano has been tasked by his girlfriend, Livia, with finding a villa near his Sicilian home for her and her friends to rent during the August holiday period. He finds it impossible, with all the estate agents laughingly telling him every property was let out ages ago.

Then, by some miracle he is notified of a cancellation. A nice house by the sea with access to the beach has become available only six miles from where he lives.

Montalbano's investigation gives him chance to
 cool off in the sea during the heat of August

But after Livia and her friends, a married couple with a young child, arrive, there is one disaster after another. They have to deal with invasions of cockroaches, rodents and spiders before they can settle down and enjoy their holiday.

After the couple’s young son goes missing, Livia calls in Montalbano to investigate. He discovers the child has fallen down a hole in the garden and accidentally discovered a hidden basement where he is trapped.

After the little boy has been rescued, Montalbano notices an old trunk in the basement and when he opens it, makes a grim discovery.

It is the final straw for the family and they leave with Livia, all blaming the whole fiasco on the hapless Montalbano.

The inspector launches an investigation after his discovery, with the assistance of two of his officers, the diligent Fazio and the comical Catarella.

But he is hampered by the scorching Sicilian weather making it difficult to work and also becomes distracted by his feelings for a beautiful, young blonde girl who is involved in the case.

Montalbano is kept going by taking long swims in the sea and making frequent visits to his favourite trattoria . He also enjoys the wonderful Sicilian delicacies prepared for him by his housekeeper, Adelina, such as pappanozza, boiled onions and potatoes mashed and served cold seasoned with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and purpiteddri, baby octopus in a sauce of tomatoes and olives.

Using his unorthodox sleuthing tactics and brilliant flashes of intuition he solves the case, achieving a Montalbano style of justice at the end.

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More reading:

Andrea Camilleri profile and full list of Montalbano titles


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20201030

And Then You Die

An Aurelio Zen Mystery by Michael Dibdin

(Italian beach view by Hermann via Pixabay)
(Italian beach view by Hermann via Pixabay)
Detective Aurelio Zen is recuperating at a beach resort in Tuscany after a long stay in hospital following a bomb attack on his car.

But when a man who has cheekily taken his place on his allotted sunbed on the beach is shot dead one afternoon, Zen realises that the members of the Mafia who had tried to kill him at the end of the previous book, Blood Rain, have had another go,

The authorities want him alive and well so he can testify at an anti-Mafia trial in the US so they waste no time in shipping him out of his peaceful coastal retreat. This inconveniences Zen, who under a false name has been about to embark on a romance with a lady from Lucca he has met on the beach.

Zen is taken to a remote prison island off the coast of Tuscany to lie low for a while before he is put on the plane to America.

Once on board, Zen moves to another seat to make himself more comfortable. The male passenger who decides to move into his empty seat is later found dead.

Due to technical difficulties, later discovered to be sabotage, the plane is forced to land in Iceland. Zen's adventures continue there when he is attacked by a man with a knife in a street in Reykjavik.

The reader is then taken on a roller coaster ride with Zen that takes him back to Rome, on to Florence, back to the beach resort and then to Lucca, where he is finally able to concentrate on his blossoming relationship. But has he overcome all the obstacles to his happiness?

He is constantly puzzled by a slogan in English he keeps seeing on the front of T shirts, Life's a beach. But what has that got to do with the words on the back, And then you die? Finally when Zen is on board a boat out at sea everything falls into place for both Zen and the reader.

And Then You Die is another gripping read  from Michael Dibdin with some wonderful descriptions of locations in Italy.

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20201013

The Paper Moon

An Inspector Montalbano Mystery by Andrea Camilleri

(Sicilian street scene by Tama66 via Pixabay)
Montalbano has to spend time with not one, but two, beautiful women while carrying out a murder investigation and at times finds himself distracted from his duties.

The victim is a pharmaceutical salesman who was shot in the face at point blank range at a moment when his trousers were down.

One of the beautiful women is the dead man’s sister. She calls on Montalbano to investigate her brother’s disappearance and Montalbano finds himself fascinated with her eyes.

He accompanies her to her brother’s apartment and after they fail to find any trace of the missing man he reluctantly gives in to her request to break down the locked door of a small room on his terrace. Inside, Montalbano finds the body of the victim.

When he goes to see the dead man’s mistress, a blue eyed blonde in her thirties, he is stunned by her beauty and finds it hard to concentrate on the case.

While he carries out his investigation he is constantly preoccupied by the fear that he is becoming forgetful as he gets older. He even writes a letter to himself to remind him of the facts in the case.

He is assisted as always by the faithful, but hapless Catarella, who works round the clock to access files on the dead man’s computer for which he doesn’t have the password, confusing Montalbano by constantly referring to it as ‘the last word’.

Meanwhile, local  politicians are dying because of a batch of dirty cocaine that is in circulation and every day Montalbano’s appointment with the Commissioner has to be cancelled for some reason by Dr Lattes (with an s on the end) who telephones Catarella with the news.

Things are as complicated and hilarious as ever at police headquarters but a determined Montalbano gets to the truth in the end.

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20200805

Friends in High Places


A Commissario Brunetti novel by Donna Leon


This is one of my favourite Brunetti novels because of the superb plotting by Donna Leon. It is always satisfying for crime fiction fans to be able to close a book at the end and think that everything makes complete sense and the conclusion was inevitable. But it is even better if you haven’t worked it out too soon.

This novel always leads the reader in the right direction but the circumstances at the end throw up a surprise.
The Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal in Venice

Brunetti is visited by a young man working for an office in Venice investigating illegal building. He hits Brunetti with the news that his apartment, just off the Grand Canal, does not exist officially and Brunetti is unable to produce the original plans for his floor to prove the official wrong.

The young man later discovers Brunetti is a police officer and rings him from his telefonino to say he is worried about something to do with his work. Brunetti tells him he would be better speaking from a public phone, but the young man does not ring back and it comes as no surprise to the reader that his dead body is discovered soon afterwards.

Brunetti does not believe the young man died accidentally and sets out with the faithful Sergeant Vianello to discover the truth.

Donna Leon frequently exposes the less savoury side of Venetian society in her books and in this novel, both money lending and drug addiction play their parts in the plot.

But, as always, her writing highlights the beauty of Venice as well and allows the reader to enjoy it with Brunetti from far away. Food lovers can also take pleasure in reading about the delicious meals Brunetti’s wife serves up for her family, cooked with fresh ingredients bought at the food market at the foot of the Rialto Bridge.

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20200720

The Patience of the Spider


An Inspector Montalbano Mystery by Andrea Camilleri


Inspector Montalbano is recovering from a gunshot wound he sustained at the end of the previous book in the series, Rounding the Mark.

The Inspector was shot in the shoulder by a man involved in trafficking very young, third world children and so he had no hesitation in taking out his own gun and shooting the despicable individual dead.

The kidnap victim had set off for a friend's house on her scooter but never arrived.
The kidnap victim had set off for a friend's
house on her scooter but never arrived.
But Montalbano's recovery from the wound is taking some time as he is feeling the weight of his years and becoming more and more introspective.

He is being looked after at his beachfront home in Marinella by his long suffering girlfriend, Livia, and keeps suffering flashbacks to his time in hospital.

However his convalescence is rudely interrupted when Catarella, one of his officers, calls him from the police station and tells him there has been a kidnapping.

The girl was a student at Palermo University and had been out in the evening to a friend’s house to study. She had left her friend to travel home on her scooter early in the evening but had never arrived.

The case just doesn’t add up in Montalbano’s opinion as the family did not have much money, so he wonders why the kidnappers would bother with this girl.

As usual his sharp mind and understanding of human nature helps him get to the truth with plenty of wry humour and a generous helping of Sicilian cuisine along the way.

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20200607

Blood Rain


An Aurelio Zen Mystery by Michael Dibdin


Zen finds himself living out his worst nightmare when he is posted to Sicily, the home of the Mafia.

An unidentified, decomposed corpse has been discovered on a train in a disused railway siding near the coast to the north of Catania and Zen has been sent to investigate.
In the shadow of Etna, the city of Catania,
 where Zen has been sent

Also on the island, to install a new computer system for the police, is Carla, a woman who believes she is Zen’s daughter. Although Zen knows this is not the case he does not tell Carla because he enjoys spending time with her.

Readers must brace themselves for having to unravel some complex plotting as it is at times difficult to keep track of the different crime families involved in the story.

Zen is not just fighting the Mafia as a single organisation, he is coming up against different groups at war with each other and he ends up caught in the middle.

But the novel contains some excellent descriptions of Sicily and Sicilian people and their way of life, and everything falls into place by the end. As usual, Zen has to cope with some corruption within the police, but he finds a way to right the wrongs and set the record straight for the warring Mafia clans.

Although some of the deaths affect Zen personally, the book is also at times entertaining and amusing and a very good read.


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20200510

Why Italy is a popular setting for crime writers


People who enjoy reading crime fiction and also love Italy are always delighted to discover a good crime novel set in an interesting location there. 

Among the best authors who write crime novels in English that are set in Italy are Michael Dibdin, Donna Leon, Tomothy Holme and Magdalen Nabb. 

But thanks to good translators, we are now able to read the works of Italian crime writers as well.

The Sicilian writer Andrea Camilleri is perhaps the most famous, but also highly recommended are Michele Giuttari, Valerio Varesi and Marco Vichi. to name but a few.

And it is always a joy to discover less well-known writers, as well as writers not normally known for books set in Italy, who have chosen to use the country as a backdrop for just one novel.

The range of crime novels set in Italy and the variety of locations they feature is constantly increasing.

Translations of crime novels by Italian writers are now much more readily available, for the first time making these books accessible to people who can’t read Italian. 

The historic cities and rugged landscapes of Sicily provide the backdrop for Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano novels
The historic cities and rugged landscapes of Sicily provide
the backdrop for Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano novels
The late Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano series set in Sicily has now been translated into more than 30 different languages and a dubbed version of the television adaptation has been shown on British television, which has helped to increase the interest in and demand for crime novels with an Italian setting.

Reading crime novels in translation is fascinating because it offers a window on day to day life in Italy, enabling us to see how people spend their time and what their preoccupations are as well as what wine they choose when they go to their local bar. 

So what makes Italy such a good setting for this genre? Many people like Italy for the weather, the scenery, the architecture, the art, the culture and let’s not forget the food and the wine. But a good crime novel set in Italy should be more than just an opportunity for armchair travel by the reader. The setting has to play an important part in the novel. 

A lot of writers are fascinated with Italy’s justice system and the much talked about corruption in the country because it can give them more freedom when they are plotting their novels.

Italy provides writers with the opportunity for ambiguity and non resolution at the end of the book, whereas traditionally readers have come to expect a credible, but tidy finish at the end of a book set in Britain.

For example, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers would allude to the fact that the murderer would hang at the end of their books because at the time they were written they thought this would provide a satisfactory resolution for the reader.

But there is often no neat conclusion at the end of a crime novel set in Italy. Andrea Camilleri has said that in Italy it can take years to find someone guilty of a crime and then there is often no appropriate punishment at the end of it all. Italians are big believers in hidden and ulterior motives and even when someone is arrested for a crime they think this won’t necessarily be the end of it.

Rome is the home city of Michael Dibdin's central  character, the detective Aurelio Zen
Rome is the home city of Michael Dibdin's central
character, the detective Aurelio Zen 
Michael Dibdin uses the Italian word dietrologia to describe this. It means the facts behind the facts, or conspiracy theory, and it is something Italians have no difficulty believing in. This makes Italy an ideal background for modern writers who want to make the investigation of lesser importance and concentrate more on the personalities of the victim, witnesses and investigators that they have created.

The perspective of the outsider is a popular device in crime fiction and so having a foreign visitor in Italy as a central character often works well. It enables the protagonist to cast a cold eye on the society that surrounds him and his detachment is often the key to his success. 

This can also work well if the character is Italian but far from home. For example with Commissario Aurelio Zen in Michael Dibdin’s novels there is a reason he feels like an outsider in Rome, which the reader eventually finds out about.

In some novels Italian police officers are working far away from their home town for operational reasons, such as Magdalen Nabb’s Maresciallo Guarnaccia, a Sicilian in Florence and Timothy Holme’s Commissario Peroni, a Neapolitan in northern Italy.

Modern crime novelists have almost become travel writers, because they describe their settings so well. This is because to the writer the location is a character in the story in its own right.

At the very least a modern crime novel set in Italy can take you on a trip to an unfamiliar city. Crime writers tell it the way it is. Unlike most travel writers they will tell you things you didn’t know and maybe would prefer not to know about a particular place.

They will tell you about day to day life, what people talk about in the bars, how the place smells, how the transport system works, or doesn’t work, in some cases.

Donna Leon sets her Commissario Brunetti novels amid the unique splendours of Venice
Donna Leon sets her Commissario Brunetti novels amid
the unique splendours of Venice
If you are lucky, as a little bonus, they will also tell you what dishes to order for lunch and the best restaurants to go to for an authentic experience of the local cuisine, as in Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti novels set in Venice.

But good crime writers do not forget the rules of the genre and that plot is of paramount importance. Readers expect to be provided with clues, suspects, and motives. They want to be entertained by a story that allows them to sit in an armchair and try to work out the solution. The characters have to be plausible and their motivation for what they do needs to be credible.

Most of all, the book needs to have an authentic background that the reader can believe in, which is why the use of the setting is so important. 
The crime, or detective, novel dates back to the mid 19th century. One of the earliest detective novels, The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe, was published in 1841 and then Wilkie Collins wrote The Woman in White in 1860.

In 1887 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave the genre fresh impetus by creating Sherlock Holmes. His skill in detection consisted of logical deduction based on minute details that had escaped the notice of others.

The classical detective novel was at the height of its popularity in Britain between about 1920 and 1940, the era of four famous women writers, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh.

Their novels provided entertainment that relied upon the reader’s interest in a logical pursuit of clues honestly put before them.

Books by these ladies are still regularly borrowed from public libraries and made into films and yet publishers and literary critics consistently claim this form of the genre has had its day. 


The atmospheric city of Florence is the setting for the
dark novels of English author Magdalen Nabb
The contemporary crime novel, or detective novel, shifts the emphasis from the clues to the characters involved in the story. It is the unveiling of the different layers of personality that lies at the root of the plot rather than just logical deduction. The personality of the detective is a vital ingredient as it is he or she whose insights produce the solution to the puzzle.

Writers who achieved this transition well include P D James, Ruth Rendell, H R F Keating, Colin Dexter and Reginald Hill.

Their books are more likely to involve professional policemen, who carry out thorough detective work rather than just relying on sudden flashes of intuition,

In Italy, people call a crime story un romanzo giallo, because since the 1930s crime novels have usually had yellow covers.

The earliest Italian mystery novels are thought to be Il Mio Cadavere (My Corpse) and La Cieca di Sorrento (The Blind Woman from Sorrento) both written by Francesco Mastriani in 1852.

Other Italian writers then began experimenting with the genre and in 1910 there was an important development when The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were published in Il Corriere della Sera.

In 1929 Mondadori established their libri gialli series and novels by famous foreign writers, including Agatha Christie, were published in Italian. The first Italian writer to be published in the series was Alessandro Varaldo with Il Sette Bello (Seven is Beautiful) in 1931 featuring police inspector Ascanio Bonich. This is considered to be the first Italian detective story.

The fascist Government asked Mondadori to ensure that at least 20 per cent of its literary production was by Italian writers and as a result more Italians started to write gialli and to imitate foreign authors.

But by 1941 Mussolini had decided he didn’t like the genre and told Mondadori to stop publishing gialli for moral reasons. He thought they would corrupt young people.

After the war, Mondadori began publishing foreign writers again, but gradually more Italian crime writers began to emerge and now hundreds are regularly published, including best selling novelists such as Andrea Camilleri. 

Sadly, Camilleri died last year, but he has left us the wonderful gift of Montalbano, who, like Sherlock Holmes, often notices the little details that other people miss. 


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20200229

Fatal Remedies


A Commissario Brunetti novel by Donna Leon


When a brick is thrown through the plate glass window of a travel agency in Venice the police officers sent to investigate the incident are shocked to discover that the offender is Paola Brunetti, the wife of Commissario Guido Brunetti.

Her action is meant to be a protest because she believes the travel agency are organising sex tours to Thailand.

But her deliberate act of vandalism has immediate repercussions for Brunetti’s police career. He is sent home on what is termed ‘administrative leave’ for an indefinite period.

He spends his time reading his favourite books about ancient Greece until his 'administrative leave' is interrupted when the owner of the travel agency is found to have been brutally murdered. 

A water bus (vaporetto) approaching Rialto Bridge.
Brunetti takes the decision to return to work and as soon as he arrives at the Questura he is put in charge of the investigation into the man’s death by his superior officer, Vice Questore Patta.

Eventually Brunetti discovers that the murdered man was involved in a money making racket that will have terrible consequences for its victims.

But he also finds out who is responsible for the brutal killing, bringing some kind of closure not just for the man’s widow, but also for his own wife, Paola.

As always Donna Leon gives the reader intriguing glimpses of daily life in Venice. On one occasion, Brunetti is with his sergeant, Vianello, on the No 82 vaporetto on the Grand Canal.

They make a last minute decision to get off at Rialto but the boat has already moved away from the jetty. Vianello goes to the sailor, who he knows, and the sailor signals to the captain to reverse the boat to enable them to get off.

This causes the boat to lurch and a woman nearly falls over, but Brunetti holds on to her to steady her.

Anyone who has ever been to Venice and been on the No 82 vaporetto will be instantly transported back to the sights, smells and sounds of the Grand Canal.

Fatal Remedies is a gripping and well plotted crime story set against the uniquely beautiful and often mysterious backdrop of Venice.

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20200212

Rounding the Mark


An Inspector Montalbano Mystery by Andrea Camilleri


During a bracing swim in the sea, Montalbano encounters a floating corpse next to him in the water. His investigative instincts are aroused when he discovers the victim is a man who is believed to have been buried some time ago. 

The Inspector is also investigating the circumstances of a hit and run accident that killed a young child and quickly discovers there is a connection with his floating corpse.

The compassionate Inspector is horrified to uncover a child trafficking racket taking place in Sicily that will have disastrous consequences for its young victims. He vows to avenge the child killed by the hit and run driver and bring the evil organisers of the trafficking to justice, whatever the risk to himself.

The fishing village of Punta Secca in southeastern Sicily is
 the location used for Montalbano's house on the beach
Although Camilleri is dealing with a horrific subject that sickens his protagonist, Montalbano, the author skilfully mixes tragedy with comedy, also showing the reader the absurdities of day to day life in Sicily and the bizarre way the police force is run by the people at the top. 

Throughout the book Montalbano is constantly on the look out for an excellent meal and trying to keep his long distance love affair with his girlfriend Livia going.

This is another gripping and entertaining mystery from Camilleri, despite the seriousness of the subject he is dealing with. 

The 14th series of the TV drama Inspector Montalbano, based on Camilleri's novels and starring Luca Zingaretti in the title role, is due on screens in Italy in March this year, taking the total number of episodes so far to 37.

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