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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A Death in Tuscany

A Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara novel by Michele Giuttari

Giuttari's novels are set in the historic and
atmospheric city of Florence

One thing you can rely on in a Michele Giuttari novel is that Italian police procedure will be accurately described. It is particularly fascinating for readers who enjoy crime novels set in Italy to see behind the scenes of an Italian police station and be on the inside of a major police investigation.

Michele Giuttari is well qualified to describe the way the Squadra Mobile (Flying Squad) unit of the Florence police operates as he once headed the unit himself when he was a serving officer in the Polizia di Stato.

This is the second novel in his series featuring Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara and the reader finds out more about the man behind the job title and his earlier life in Sicily as the case he is working on involves one of his oldest and dearest friends.

The novel begins with a young girl found unconscious and scantily dressed in remote countryside in the hills above Florence. She later dies in hospital and the cause of her death is put down to a drugs overdose. The hospital staff and some of the police assume she was a drug addict and probably a prostitute.

Michele Giuttari writes with authority as
a former serving police officer

But Chief Superintendent Ferrara is not so sure. For one thing the girl is very young, possibly between 13 and 15 years old. There is nothing on her body to identify her and no one has reported her missing.

Ferrara digs deeper and embarks on an investigation that soon throws up connections with some of the richest and most powerful people in Florence.

In the meantime, his old friend from Sicily, bookshop owner Massimo Verga, goes missing while staying on the Tuscan coast.

Ferrara and his wife, Petra, are extremely worried about the disappearance of Massimo and therefore Ferrara hands over the inquiry into the death of the unidentified girl to one of his colleagues so that he can try to find his friend.

The Carabinieri are handling the case and are working on the theory that his friend, Massimo, has absconded with his lover, a rich, beautiful businesswoman, after they have killed her ex-husband.

They resent Ferrara’s interference and put in a complaint about him, which results in his suspension from duty. But he is not content to leave the case to the Carabinieri and continues to investigate unofficially, with the help of his loyal team of officers and his good friend, Deputy Prosecutor Anna Giulietti.

It is a race against time to find Massimo before anything happens to him and also to prove he is innocent of the murder.

But Ferrara finds he is up against the Mafia and a gang of ruthless Albanian drugs bosses, as well as his own Commissioner, who is enraged both by his unorthodox behaviour and because he has fallen foul of the Carabinieri.

A Death in Tuscany is well plotted and gripping, with the solution to the crimes coming right at the end. The underlying themes of friendship and loyalty are neatly interwoven with the action.

 

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(Image of Florence by Mark Gilder from Pixabay)

The Marshal’s Own Case

A Marshal Guarnaccia Investigation by Magdalen Nabb
 

Marshall Guarnaccia investigates grisly
goings-on after dark in Florence

Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia’s superior officer in the Carabinieri, Captain Maestrangelo, puts him in charge of a murder case after a chopped up body is found in plastic bags on his territory.

It takes the Marshal away from his familiar world in the Carabinieri station at the Pitti Palace and plunges him into the nocturnal world of the transgender prostitutes operating in Florence.

For despite having breasts, the body which has been neatly sawn into pieces and dispersed between a number of plastic bags, turns out to be that of a man not a woman.

Despite observing that the Marshal never has much to say for himself, the Captain rates his ability and knows that the Marshal doesn’t miss much, as evidenced by his previous successes.

But the Marshal has to learn quickly, in order to operate within a community he has no experience of, and which seems a long way from the daily difficulties of tourists and their lost property and passports that he is used to.

He is dismayed when the Captain hands him a pile of files relating to previous murders of prostitutes and their clients in Florence, all of which are marked Unsolved.

Magdalen Nabb set 14
crime novels in Florence

But the Captain does assign to him one of his own men, Ferrini, a friendly and talkative officer, who knows his way around in the shadowy world of transgender prostitution.

Guarnaccia quickly develops some sympathy for the tragic men, who have had surgery and been given hormone treatments to make them look like women, so that they can satisfy the desires of their regular clients, who are usually seemingly respectable men living in Florence.

When Peppina, one of the transgender prostitutes, is arrested and locked in a cell, suspected of the murder of what turns out to be Lulu, one of her rivals, Guarnaccia believes she is not guilty of the crime.

He is so sure of Peppina’s innocence, despite the evidence against her, he insists on continuing his inquiries, even though he is urged to drop the investigation because the Prosecutor has said he is satisfied with the result.

Against a backdrop of other problems, with one of his two young sons not doing well at school and getting into trouble, and his wife urging him to look for the missing son of an acquaintance from back home in Sicily, he keeps going out at night in terrible weather to try to solve the crime to his own satisfaction.

His patience and tenacity pays off and he catches the real killer, strives to get the most lenient sentence for Peppina for other charges she is facing, and can then finally turn his attention to his own, troubled young son.

This is another compelling mystery by Magdalen Nabb, which exposes a shadowy part of life going on at night in the beautiful, historic city of Florence. 

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The Death of a Mafia Don

A Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara novel by Michele Giuttari

Looking along the Arno towards Ponte Vecchio in Florence,
the backdrop for Michele Giuttari's book

When a bomb explodes near Chief Superintendant Ferrara’s car in the centre of Florence, leaving the head of the Squadra Mobile injured, there is an urgent need to find out who was responsible to prevent further atrocities.

Ferrara is unconscious and in hospital so his loyal colleagues have to start the investigation without him.

There are conflicting theories. It could have been the work of Muslim extremists but it could also have been revenge by the Mafia for the imprisonment of their boss, Salvatore Laprua.

Soon after he regains consciousness, Ferrara discharges himself from hospital and goes straight back to his office to lead the inquiry.

It becomes even more personal for him when a second bomb goes off and his colleague and friend, Acting Prosecutor Anna Giulietti, is killed.

To add to the complications, Mafia boss Salvatore Laprua is then found dead in his prison cell.

This is a fast moving novel about potential terrorism and Mafia activity in Italy seen from the perspective of the security forces.

It shows the way the police and the Carabinieri work together and there is a realistic portrait of Florence as the backdrop, described by an author who was himself responsible for jailing several key Mafia figures while heading the Squadra Mobile in both Florence and Reggio Calabria.

The author, Giuttari, has been a special adviser to the interior minister in Rome with the remit  of monitoring Mafia activity.

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A Long Finish

An Aurelio Zen Mystery by Michael Dibdin

Zen is given an assignment he can’t possibly refuse when he is sent to the wine producing town of Alba in Piedmont in northern Italy.

He has been sent to try to get the son of a wine producer released from prison, following orders instigated by an influential and wealthy man in Rome, who is a passionate wine collector.

He can’t turn down the job because it has been made clear to him the alternative would be a posting to Sicily. He would be drafted into the elite squad of officers chosen to spearhead a campaign against the Mafia and this time the Government is planning a fight to the finish against the organisation.

However, all Zen has to do if he goes to Alba is to secure the release from prison of a man accused of murdering his father, in time for him to make this year’s wine.

The UK television adaptations of the Aurelio Zen
novels starred the actor Rufus Sewell

Some people believe Manlio Vincenzo has been wrongly accused of murdering  Aldo Vincenzo, but he had a row with his father the night before he was killed and the Carabinieri have quickly arrested him.

The Vincenzo Barbaresco DOC is known to be the best in the region and if Manlio Vincenzo is let out in time he will be able to make this year’s vintage, which is predicted could be the wine of the century and would be highly collectable.

It is not long after Zen’s arrival in Alba that Manlio is released anyway and the local Polizia Vice-Questore thinks that will be the end of the assignment for the officer from Rome. But Zen is in no hurry to leave Alba because he is fully aware of what is planned for him next.

Large wine barrels form part of a display in Piazza Duomo,
one of the main squares in Alba's historic centre

The subsequent deaths of a local truffle hunter and another less important wine producer provide him with clues and using his unique, investigative skills, Zen ferrets out the old relationships among the locals and the grudges still harboured that lie at the heart of the mystery.

The story, skilfully told by Dibdin, continues even after Zen believes he has arrived at the truth as, like the famous Barbaresco wine, the case has A Long Finish.

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The Marshal and the Murderer

A Marshal Guarnaccia Investigation by Magdalen Nabb 

The Marshall is asked to investigate the disappearance of a Swiss girl staying in Florence, who has been learning pottery-making in a nearby village.

And when her body is found outside a ceramics factory in the village, the local Marshal is keen for Guarnaccia to stay and help out with the murder investigation.

The two Carabinieri officers find it frustrating that no one in the village seems to want to help them find the killer. They are met with a wall of silence and are convinced they are not being told the whole truth about the girl’s movements on the day she was murdered.

The breakthrough comes when they speak to a retired doctor about the grim events that took place in the village during the German occupation in the early 1940s.

Marshall Guarnaccia finally begins to see a pattern emerge, but puts his own life at risk when he goes to confront the murderer.

Magdalen Nabb tells the compelling story well and shows the reader life in a part of Tuscany that tourists seldom visit, drawing on her own knowledge of the ceramics industry she herself had worked in.

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(Picture of Florence by Helena Volpi from Pixabay)

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Death in Autumn

A Marshal Guarnaccia investigation by Magdalen Nabb

Marshal Guarnaccia’s instincts come to be heavily relied upon by his Carabinieri captain during a difficult investigation into the murder of a lonely German woman living in Florence.

The woman’s body had been found floating in the River Arno clad only in a fur coat and jewellery.

The Marshal’s big, slightly protuding eyes notice everything and he soon works out who is lying to him when he makes his enquiries at the hotel in he city where she had been living for the last 15 years and at the villa she owned in Greve in Chianti.

He is intrigued to find out she had become friends with the night porter at the hotel and he is also suspicious of the young people who are renting the villa from her.

The Captain is glad to follow the Marshal’s intuition in this complex case. He and his men are already stretched by an operation to track down the dealers at the centre of the drugs trade in the city that has recently led to the deaths of two young people and he is feeling pressurised by the Substitute Prosecutor to get a quick result in the murder case.

Magdalen Nabb brings the streets and squares of Florence alive in this clever, well-written mystery, which keeps the reader guessing till the end.

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Death in Springtime

A Marshal Guarnaccia mystery by Magdalen Nabb

 

Magdalen Nabb's story begins in late winter in
Marshal Guarnaccia's home city of Florence

When a wealthy American student is kidnapped in Florence with one of her college friends, the Carabinieri move swiftly to try to find her before she comes to any harm.

English-speaking Lieutenant Bacci tries to win the confidence of the girl’s friend after she is released by the kidnappers and found wandering in the countryside.

And Captain Maestrangelo and a new Substitute Prosecutor organise a massive operation to search the part of the Tuscan hills where the confused girl was discovered.

But it is Marshal Guarnaccia’s enquiries on his own patch near Palazzo Pitti, the area of the city where the American girl had been staying, that yield the clues that eventually lead to the kidnappers.

Magdalen Nabb tells the story cleverly, paving the way towards an outcome that is completely unexpected.

The story begins on the first of March with snow falling in Florence, which provides a big distraction for the local people at the time the young women are kidnapped.

And Death in Springtime ends with such a surprise that it will give the reader something to think about long after they have finished the last page.

(Image by Mark Gilder from Pixabay)

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Death of a Dutchman

A Marshal Guarnaccia mystery

In the heat of the summer in Florence, the Marshal embarks on a single-handed mission to bring a person to justice for murder.

He had been called out to investigate after an old lady heard suspicious noises coming from a neighbouring apartment and after gaining entrance he had discovered a dying man.

The victim was a young Dutch jeweller who occasionally used the apartment when he visited Florence on business. Although the officers called in to investigate the death come to the conclusion that he has committed suicide, the Marshal has misgivings.

He makes a few unofficial enquiries of his own and eventually has a suspect in his sights. Unable to intervene officially, and conscious that the murderer will get away with it if he doesn’t do anything, the Marshal embarks on an exhausting pursuit of his quarry throughout the city, hoping to uncover the proof that he needs.

It is an intriguing and absorbing story revealing Magdalen Nabb’s detailed knowledge of Florence. It should come as no surprise that the novelist Georges Simenon referred to Death of a Dutchman as ‘a masterpiece’. 

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(Florence picture by Makalu from Pixabay)

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Death of an Englishman

The first Marshal Guarnaccia novel by Magdalen Nabb

Florence in the run up to Christmas is skilfully presented to us by Magdalen Nabb as the setting for this novel. 

She doesn't just portray the famous city crammed full of art treasures that is so popular with  tourists, but instead gives an insider's view of what it is like to live in an apartment in one of the big old palaces, either as an ex-pat Brit or a working Italian.

She lets us see the city from an interesting variety of viewpoints. There is the Carabinieri officer, Marshal Guarnaccia, a Sicilian who is homesick for his island and misses his wife and family. We also see Florence through the eyes of two English detectives who have arrived to work alongside the Carabinieri on the investigation and we get an insight into the thoughts of the new recruit, the Florentine officer, Carabiniere Bacci.

The novel starts with the discovery of the body of an elderly Englishman in his ground floor apartment. Despite the circumstances in which he seems to have been living, he turns out to be well-connected and from an upper class background.

The Marshal is ill in bed with the flu and his junior officer, Bacci, has to work under his direction while also acting as an interpreter for the Carabinieri captain with the English detectives.  But it is the Sicilian marshal who shows the deepest understanding of the personalities involved and uncovers the shocking truth.

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(Image by djedj from Pixabay)     

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