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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