Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio by Mario Giordano

Hilarious road trip highlights the beauty of Sicily for readers

Sicily is the setting again for Mario
Giordano's third Auntie Poldi novel

The irrepressible Auntie Poldi takes her German nephew on a chaotic tour of Sicily, the island she has made her home while carrying out her plan of ‘drinking herself to death with a sea view’, in this third novel in the series.

She is looking for ‘someone’ she hopes will be able to lead her to the mysterious ‘something’ that she has been instructed to find, if she wants to prevent members of her family from being killed.

Despite the gravity of the task, her trip leads her into a series of romantic liaisons and a mixture of hair-raising and hilarious misadventures. It also showcases some of the beauty and magic of the island of Sicily for the reader to enjoy.

All the nephew gets out of it are long uncomfortable hours of driving a Maserati - which he knows was stolen by Poldi from someone she suspects of being in the Mafia – along with the occasional threat to his life.

They are guided on their journey by Uncle Martino, brought along by Poldi as a ‘sat nav’, who is sitting in the back of the car with his constantly farting dog, Totti.

The anonymous German nephew’s sixty-something Bavarian Aunt, Poldi, had been happily enjoying her retirement in the sunshine, with free-flowing Sicilian wine and romantic liaisons with her lover, Chief Inspector Vito Montano.

Then her peace had been interrupted by the last person she had expected to turn up on her doorstep, one of her former husbands.

The unwanted caller had been John Owenya, a detective with the Tanzanian Ministry of Home Affairs, who needed help finding his half-brother, who had gone missing in Sicily.

The real coastal town of Torre Archirafi, between Catania
and Taormina, is home to the fictional Auntie Poldi

Along with his brother had been the sum of ten million dollars that crime gangs both in Sicily and Tanzania apparently had an interest in finding.

The glamorous Poldi feels she has to help her ex-husband, John to find his brother. She wants to save his brother’s life if possible, and also to have the chance of getting back the proceeds from the sale of her house in Tanzania that she felt her ex-husband had cheated her out of when they parted.  

Soon after her nephew from Germany arrives to stay with her for a holiday in Torre Achirafi, she sweeps him off on a madcap hunt to find someone known as ‘Handsome Antonio’.

As usual there is plenty of Sicilian food and wine to savour, no shortage of handsome men interested in Poldi,  and the beautiful backdrop of Sicily under a blue sky to enjoy in this novel, all of which Mario Giordano serves up for the reader with a large dose of humour.

Buy AuntiePoldi and the Handsome Antonio from Amazon and support Crime Scene Italy

Home

Doctored Evidence by Donna Leon

Atmospheric page turner plumbs the murky depths of Venetian daily life

Doctored Evidence is the 13th
Commissario Brunetti novel

Brunetti is investigating the murder of Signora Battestini, a miserly old woman who was disliked by everyone in Venice who knew her.

He has two things motivating him to solve the murder of this unpleasant old woman. One is to exonerate Flori, her domestic helper, who is now dead herself. He has been given evidence that shows she could not possibly have killed her employer.

The second is to stop another police officer from harassing and trying to discredit Signora Gismondi, a neighbour of the victim, who claims she can prove the domestic helper’s innocence.

It is the summer and his work is made all the more arduous because of the extreme heat in his beloved home city, but he works determinedly to find who was really responsible for Signora Battestini‘s death. He does not want the murder to remain unsolved and the dead Romanian domestic to be presumed guilty while the real killer is still at large.

Signora Battestini was found alone in her apartment with her head battered in, by her doctor when he paid his monthly visit.

Her maid, Flori, was on a train for Romania when police boarded it and searched the carriages. Asked for her documents, she panicked and made a run for it and was hit by a train when she crossed the tracks.

For Brunetti’s nemesis, Lieutenant Scarpa, who is investigating the death, it means that the case is closed. However, when the victim’s neighbour, Signora Gismondi, returns from a business trip to London and reads about the murder, she knows that Flori could not possibly have been the murderer.

Before going on her trip, she had rescued Flori after her cantankerous employer had locked her out of the apartment without any of her possessions. She had seen Signora Battestini at the window making gestures to Flori and when the unhappy maid had told her she just wanted to return to Romania, she had given her money and taken her to the station and put her on the train.

Donna Leon's novels invariably conjure up the
atmosphere of Venice in the reader's mind

But when she tries to explain this to Lieutenant Scarpa, he does not believe her and tells her that Flori was guilty and the case is closed. Brunetti later gives her a more sympathetic hearing and he sets out to investigate for himself.

With Sergeant Vianello at his side, he looks into the old woman’s past and her financial affairs, and those of her dead husband and son. He finds out she was very wealthy, despite seeming to live in poverty and having earned a reputation for extreme meanness.

Sustained by lavish meals cooked by his wife, Paola, and evening drinks on their terrace while they discuss the meaning of life, he keeps digging until he finds out the truth.

He even personally searches the attic of the old lady’s apartment and methodically goes through the bizarre items she has hoarded, until he finds the real motive for the murder.

Doctored Evidence has a complex plot and the reader learns more about life in Venice along the way. This 13th book in the series is a good reminder of why I should keep reading Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti novels.

Buy Doctored Evidence from Amazon and support Crime Scene Italy

Home

Murder in Tuscany by T A Williams

An Armstrong and Oscar Cozy Mystery

Murder in Tuscany introduces
detective Dan Armstrong

This first crime novel by T A Williams is set in the Tuscan hills above Florence and has many descriptions of the gorgeous scenery and local food and wine enjoyed by the characters.

Villa Volpone, the home of the best-selling crime novelist, Jonah Moore, is hosting a creative writing course, and among the 11 students are writers of erotic novels at various stages in their careers.  Some are established authors - ladies in their sixties, seventies and eighties - and some of the younger ones are yet to publish their first books.

Standing out from the other students is retired Detective Chief Inspector Dan Armstrong, who has still not finished his first novel, an historical murder mystery set in Florence. His former colleagues have paid for the course as a retirement present for him and have chosen the genre of erotica, either by mistake, or for a laugh.

Although he has misgivings about the focus of the course, Dan has been persuaded to participate anyway by his daughter, and he also feels in need of a holiday, having just parted from his wife after many years of marriage. He is looking forward to exploring Florence in his free time, to gather background material for his own book.

His host, Jonah Moore, turns out to be arrogant and unashamedly lecherous towards the younger women, and not many tears are shed after he is discovered in the dining room with his own Silver Dagger award sticking out of his chest.

Dan has already met the investigating officer in the case, Commissario Virgilio Pisano, who is a friend of one of his ex-colleagues. Pisano is keen to have Dan to help out with the investigation with his translation skills, and he also encourages him to share his own ideas about the murder, based on his long experience.

T A Williams, a romance author
with a taste for crime

Once you get into the novel you become more acquainted with the cast of characters, some of who are described at the beginning by Dan as ‘septuagenarians who are remarkably sprightly for their advancing years,’ which I thought might seem patronising to older readers who are active and still have careers. But nonetheless, Murder in Tuscany is an enjoyable read.

Dan is a likeable character and remarkably charitable towards his former wife, who despite having set up home with another man, has taken his house, car, and a large chunk of his pension away from him.

But the other star of the book is the villa’s black labrador, Oscar, who befriends Dan by knocking him into the pool and then remains by his side throughout the novel helping with the investigation.

The author, T A Williams, is the author of many romance novels set in Tuscany, and Murder in Tuscany, published in 2022 by Boldwood Books Limited, is a promising start to his crime series.

Dan, as a retired Detective Chief Inspector, is well set up to help the local police and investigate more intriguing cases, and I look forward to reading his adventures in the next book, Murder in Chianti.

Order your copy of Murder in Tuscany, by T A Williams

Home

The Treasure Hunt by Andrea Camilleri

A disturbing puzzle is solved amid chaos and comedy

The Treasure Hunt is the 16th
in the Montalbano series

The story begins with Gregorio and Caterina, two elderly people who are brother and sister, reported to be shooting at the people in the piazza below their apartment to ‘punish them for their sins’.

News cameras later film Inspector Montalbano, with his gun in hand, scaling the building to try to capture the deranged pair. Afterwards, when order has been restored, he is hailed as a hero by everyone.

But a few days later, he starts to receive messages in bad verse from an anonymous person challenging him to take part in a treasure hunt.

While trying to work out who is sending the sinister poems, Montalbano also has to lead his men in a hunt to find a beautiful young woman who has been reported missing by her distraught father.

The reader joins Montalbano on the trail through the sunny Sicilian streets, where he meets some eccentric characters and constantly finds himself in hilarious situations.

And from the descriptions of dishes on the menu at Enzo’s trattoria, or the meals cooked by the Inspector’s housekeeper, Adelina, eaten on his terrace overlooking the beach, you can almost smell the Sicilian food that the inspector enjoys along the way.

But all the time the clock is ticking, as the officers race to find the missing woman before she comes to any harm, and the Inspector becomes concerned about the increasingly sinister clues for the treasure hunt that he keeps receiving.

Camilleri died in 2019. He is
buried in Rome's Non-Catholic
cemetery in Testaccio

Montalbano also has to put up with irate phone calls from his long-distance girlfriend, Livia, who is jealous of his friendship with a beautiful Swedish woman, Ingrid.

On top of this, there is interference from his boss, the Commissioner, and the mangled speech of his officer, Catarella, when he relays telephone messages to the Inspector, to contend with.

Only at the end of the book, when Montalbano has put himself at great risk to solve the disappearance of the young woman, does everything  fall into place and the shooting spree carried out by the elderly brother and sister finally make any sense.

Another great trip to Sicily in the company of Montalbano.

Buy TheTreasure Hunt by Andrea Camilleri

Home

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Buy The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths from Amazon

Home

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.

Buy from Amazon

Home

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.

Buy from Amazon

Home

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.

Buy Paganini's Ghost from or

Home

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. 

Buy Uniform Justice from or

Home

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.

Buy The Medici Murders from or

Home

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.

Buy Sleeper (or The Rainaldi Quartet) from

Home

The Dance of the Seagull

An Inspector Montalbano Mystery by Andrea Camilleri

A seagull fills Montalbano with a sense of 
foreboding at the start of compelling story

Inspector Montalbano is left with a strange sense of foreboding when he sees a seagull die on the beach in front of the terrace of his villa, after the bird had performed a strange spinning motion with one wing open, inscribing a circle.

Afterwards he goes to the airport to meet his girlfriend, Livia, who has flown to Sicily from her home town of Genoa to spend some quiet time with him. Montalbano has booked some leave from work so that they can visit some of the island’s Baroque cities that Livia has never seen.

He leaves Livia at his home to go into the police station to finish off some routine work before starting his holiday. While he is in his office, the wife of Fazio, one of his officers, comes in to see him to say she is worried about her husband, who is missing and hasn’t contacted her as he usually does when he has to work all night.

The circumstances are worrying and Montalbano feels he has to look into it straight away. He visits the port with his deputy, Mimi Augello, because the night before, Fazio had told his wife he was going there to meet Montalbano.

A customs officer tells them that the previous night he heard shots while on duty.  Montalbano thinks Fazio may have gone to investigate something at the port on his own and he becomes worried. He is very fond of Fazio and therefore the Inspector becomes totally focused on the investigation, realising that the longer Fazio is missing, the more chance there is that he is dead.

The Dance of the Seagull is the 
15th Montalbano mystery

A tip off from a criminal, who says he has seen a badly injured Fazio with two other men in a remote area of the island, leads them to investigate a place where there are dry wells, into which the Mafia sometimes throw the bodies of their victims. Montalbano deploys firemen to search the wells and they find the bodies of two men, but neither of them is Fazio.

Montalbano has a chilling feeling the Mafia are involved in Fazio’s disappearance and becomes desperate to find the injured officer alive before it is too late. He works night and day on the investigation, hardly stopping to eat or rest.

He looks into everyone who has tried to contact Fazio through the police switchboard recently and finally begins to piece things together.

But then his troubles really begin, when he realises that he has left Livia waiting alone at his villa to start their holiday together…

The Dance of the Seagull is a compelling story with an intriguing crime at the heart of it that Montalbano must solve in order to find Fazio before it is too late.

As always, the novel provides fascinating insights into life in Sicily and moments that make the reader want to laugh out loud, despite the unrelenting suspense.

Buy The Dance of the Seagull from or

(Picture credit: Seagull by Edgar Gonzalez from Pixabay)

Home

Vengeance in Venice

A second murder mystery set in Venice by Philip Gwynne Jones

The Giardini della Biennale, which hosts the
Venice arts festival, is in the Castello district

Amateur sleuth Nathan Sutherland shows his compassionate side in Vengeance in Venice when he feels sorry for an artist who he meets at an exclusive event during the Venetian Biennale.

He senses Paul Considine, the artist, is nervous and vulnerable and feels even more sympathetic when he discovers that he has already received a scathing review from a Times art critic before the exhibition has even opened to the public.

That same critic, Gordon Blake-Hoyt, is present at the reception in the British pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale, to which Nathan has been invited in his role as honorary British Consul in Venice.

When the unpleasant GBH, as he is nicknamed, falls from a glass-floored corridor overlooking the exhibition and is decapitated by a vertical shard of glass that is part of the artworks on display, Nathan finds himself caught up in a murder mystery again. A postcard found in the victim’s pocket - of a painting by Artemesia Gentileschi showing Judith beheading Holofernes - indicates that the death was not just the result of a tragic accident.

Paul Considine is among the suspects but all Nathan’s instincts tell him that the artist is not the murderer and he sets out to try to prove it.

Nathan Sutherland returns
in Vengeance in Venice 

In theory, Nathan's unpaid job as honorary consul should be no more dangerous than helping British tourists who have lost their passports or become ill during their holidays, but as happened in The Venetian Game, Nathan can’t resist sleuthing and putting his own life and that of his friend, Dario, at risk. His paid job, as a freelance translator of diy manuals, clearly doesn’t provide him with enough excitement.

Nathan’s personal life has moved on since The Venetian Game and his friend, Federica, the art restorer, is now his partner. His lifestyle has become less chaotic as a result and he has become more domesticated and is enjoying cooking for two. But at one point he risks losing Federica by keeping her in the dark about his unofficial investigation.

The story is well told by Phillip Gwynne Jones against the beautiful backdrop of Venice in the early summer, as Nathan moves round the city by vaporetto and traghetto, pausing occasionally for Prosecco and cicchetti and savouring the art and architecture along the way.

Vengeance in Venice was published by Constable in 2018. 

Buy it from or

Home

 

The Age of Doubt

An Inspector Montalbano Mystery by Andrea Camilleri

The mystery in The Age of Doubt begins with
the crew of a yacht finding a body in a dinghy

A chance encounter with a strange young woman who Inspector Montalbano meets on the way to work one morning prompts him to visit the harbour authorities at Vigàta.

A yacht called the Vanna that the young woman said belonged to her aunt was due to sail in that afternoon but at the harbour he discovers it has been held up out at sea because of stormy weather.

Later in the day, a lieutenant from the harbour office gets in touch with Montalbano to tell him that the people on board the Vanna have called ahead to report that they have encountered a dinghy floating in the sea carrying the dead body of a man.

The crew have taken the dead body, which has a badly disfigured face, on board the yacht and they bring it into the harbour with them. The harbour physician, who Montalbano knows and likes, asks him to come down to look at the body with him. Despite trying to argue that the victim may have died in international waters, Montalbano soon finds himself in charge of a murder investigation.

The Inspector becomes suspicious of the owner of the yacht, a bad tempered middle aged woman, who denies all knowledge of the supposed niece he had met that morning. However, he later realises he has been conned by the strange young woman.

Camilleri's The Age of Doubt is
published by Pan Macmillan 

Montalbano soon finds himself embroiled in a puzzling mystery and at one stage has to sit down and writes a letter to himself to help him understand the various aspects of the case.

Everything is made even more chaotic by Catarella’s inability to understand people on the phone, but Montalbano continues to show remarkable patience with him.

He also has to deal with the Commissioner over a problem with paperwork on his desk that got wet during the stormy weather

Despite his long standing relationship with his girlfriend, Livia, he finds himself becoming dangerously besotted with a beautiful young woman who works at the harbour and he has to risk his own life to help her when events reach their dramatic conclusion.

The Age of Doubt - the 14th in the highly popular series - is a hectic but highly readable Montalbano mystery, laced with plenty of humour, in which as usual Camilleri keeps a few surprises up his sleeve until the end. 

Buy The Age of Doubt from or

Home