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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The Assisi Murders

An Achille Peroni mystery by Timothy Holme

Commissario Achille Peroni is tempted by plenty of beautiful women while on a pilgrimage to Assisi but he finds himself irresistibly drawn to a lady who had lived in the city during the 13th century.

When one of his fellow pilgrims is arrested on a charge of shooting her lover, Peroni takes it upon himself to conduct an investigation completely independent of the police officers assigned to the case from Perugia.

But his enquiries uncover a 13th century mystery involving a woman who had been a confidante of St Francis of Assisi himself.

Timothy Holme skilfully blends Peroni’s investigations into the present day murder with his fascinating journey into the past intrigues of medieval Assisi, which are revealed in the letters the Commissario discovers written by St Francis’s close female friend, the fascinating Jacopa de Settesoli.

He is ably assisted in the investigation by an eccentric English woman crime writer living in Assisi, Dame Iolanthe Higgins, a well-drawn character who adds humour and colour to the story.

As ever, Timothy Holme serves up an intriguing mystery that is also amusing and entertaining for his readers.

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Cabal

An Aurelio Zen mystery by Michael Dibdin

Michael Dibdin’s third Zen novel is set in Rome and begins with the death of a man inside the Basilica of Saint Peter during Mass.

A body plummets to the ground from high up in the great dome of the church and ends up on the marble floor in front of all of the worshippers.

Zen is asked to investigate the circumstances by the Vatican to ensure they are seen to be open and fair and are not just accepting the convenient theory that the man was committing suicide.

But getting the answers he needs isn’t easy after one witness after another is silenced before he can talk to them by violent death.

Knowing himself to be under threat, Zen has to penetrate a sinister, secret organisation known as the Cabal in order to save his own skin and put an end to the killings.

Dibdin starts the book in Rome and then Zen travels by train to Milan and you can tell you are in a different city when he gets off the train, that’s how good his settings are.

He puts in details about contemporary life in Rome in that period, including the disruption caused by extending the metro, that make the reader feel they are living through it with Zen.

Towards the end of the book a lot of the action takes place in the Galleria in Milan and his sharp observations about the architecture, shops and restaurants makes you feel you are living in that period in the city.

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Death in the High City first anniversary

 

Successful year for Bergamo’s first English crime novel

 

Death in the High City, the first British detective novel to be set in Bergamo, has had an exciting first year.

The novel, which was published in Kindle format on Amazon 12 months ago today, has sold copies in the UK, Italy, America, Australia and Canada . A paperback version of Death in the High City was published in July 2014.

The novel in Piazza Vecchia

Author Val Culley has had some heart warming emails and messages about the book from readers both in the UK and abroad and has been delighted with the level of interest in her first novel.

In October 2014 Val was a guest at the fifth anniversary celebrations of Bergamo Su e Giù a group of independent tour guides in the city. She was invited to present Death in the High City to an audience in San Pellegrino Terme and sign copies of the book and she also made an appearance on Bergamo TV to talk about the novel with presenter Teo Mangione.

In November the book was purchased by Leicestershire Libraries and is now in stock at Loughborough, Shepshed, Ashby de la Zouch, Coalville, Castle Donington and Kegworth Libraries and is going out on loan regularly. In April this year Val was invited to Bergamo again to present her novel to a group of 80 Italian teachers of English and to sign copies. She made a second appearance on Bergamo TV and also formally presented a copy of Death in the High City to the Biblioteca Civica (Civic Library) in Piazza Vecchia, a location that is featured in the novel itself.

Death in the High City centres on the investigation into the death of an English woman who was staying in the Città Alta while writing a biography of the composer Gaetano Donizetti.

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

Val signing copies of her book in Bergamo

The victim 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 local police do not believe there is enough evidence to open a murder enquiry and so Kate Butler, who is the victim’s cousin, arrives in Bergamo to try to get some answers about her death.

Kate visits many of the places in the city with Donizetti connections and her enquiries even 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 lover, Steve Bartorelli, joins her to help unravel the mystery and trap the killer. The reader is able to go along for the ride and enjoy Bergamo ’s wonderful architecture and scenery while savouring the many descriptions in the novel of local food and wine.

The novel will be of interest to anyone who enjoys the ‘cosy’ crime fiction genre or likes detective novels with an Italian setting.

Death in the High City by Val Culley is available from

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A Venetian Reckoning

A Commissario Brunetti novel by Donna Leon

In A Venetian Reckoning we discover that
Brunetti lives near the church of San Polo

Brunetti starts to investigate the murder of a prominent international lawyer on a train and soon finds himself uncovering a frightening network of corruption in Venice and further afield.

His enquiries into the secret lives of some of the top people in his home city lead to repercussions for both himself and his family, but he refuses to allow himself to be deterred from uncovering the truth.

We learn more about his domestic life in this fourth novel of the series and discover that his apartment is in Calle Tiepolo near the church of San Polo. At one point he sends his daughter, Chiara, out to buy some of his favourite Dolcetto wine from a nearby restaurant, Do Mori, demonstrating Donna Leon’s attention to detail, which helps to bring her characters and the city of Venice to life for the reader.

Brunetti discovers that a seedy bar is at the hub of an evil crime network involving the exploitation of women, from which rich, seemingly respectable people, are profiting.

But as ever there is a twist in the story leading to a poignant end to the book.

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When in Rome

A Roderick Alleyn mystery

 

By Ngaio Marsh (1899 – 1982)

A brilliant portrait of Rome during the swinging sixties is painted by Dame Ngaio Marsh in this novel, which was first published in 1970.

The handsome and astute Superintendent Alleyn is in Rome ‘incognito’, trying to gather information about the international drugs trade.

Posing as a tourist, he joins a very select guided tour for the day to visit a church and enjoy a picnic at the Palatine Hill.

The tour organiser, or ‘cicerone’ as he is referred to in the book, mysteriously disappears while escorting the wealthy and aristocratic members of the party inside the Basilica of San Tommaso in Pallaria. Alleyn, working with the Italian Polizia, eventually discovers a body in the Basilica.

Much of the action takes place inside the church, which the author describes in great detail, showing a fine appreciation of place. And, while enjoying the many excellent descriptions of the eternal city, the reader is kept guessing, with twists and turns of the plot right until the end of the book, about the identity of the murderer.

New Zealand-born Ngaio Marsh wrote 32 novels featuring Roderick Alleyn, a gentleman detective who worked for the Metropolitan Police in London. They were published between 1934 and 1982. Dame Ngaio Marsh has been ranked as one of the four Queens of Crime of the 20th century, alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Margery Allingham.

When in Rome is currently available in paperback as part of The Ngaio Marsh Collection Book 9 (Harper), alongside Clutch of Constables and Tied Up in Tinsel, and as an eBook.  It is due to be re-released as a paperback in its own right by Felony and Mayhem in September.

(Image by neufal54 from Pixabay)

Buy the Kindle edition of When In Rome from Amazon.

Also available as part of The Ngaio March Collection, Book 9, available from 

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The Big Story

By Morris West 

Piazza Sant'Antonino in Sorrento, where the
action in Morris West's story takes place

This book by bestselling Australian novelist and playwright Morris West is not a conventional detective story but the setting is Sorrento in southern Italy and there is a ‘whodunnit’ element to the plot.

Written in 1957, the novel features as its main protagonist an American journalist, Richard Ashley, who has been working on an exposure of graft in Italy's rich and powerful ruling clique that he hopes will make headlines all over the world.

At the centre of the corruption is the rich and powerful Vittorio, Duke of Orgagna and an added complication is that Ashley once had an affair with his wife, Cosima, and deep down he is still in love with her.

The Duke has to prevent Ashley’s story from being published as it would ruin his political ambitions and he arranges for the journalist to be framed for murder.

The mystery for the reader is who actually committed the murder and who will emerge the winner at the end, the journalist or the Duke.

For those who love Sorrento the book - later retitled as The Crooked Road and made into a film starring Stewart Granger - is interesting as it depicts the glamour of the resort 60 years ago when it was popular with the rich and famous.

And all credit to Morris West, the story reaches a tense climax with an unexpected twist at the end.

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