At the Lake of Sudden Death

An Achille Peroni mystery by Timothy Holme

 

Commissario Achille Peroni is captivated by a red-haired English girl who takes him sailing while he is on holiday at a resort on Lake Garda.

When her dead body is found floating in the lake it is assumed by the local police that she had an accident while out in her boat.

The old harbour at Desenzano del Garda - at the end
of the lake where the action in the book takes place

But Peroni, who by now has become emotionally involved with the dead girl, remembers how well she handled her boat when she took him out and refuses to be convinced.

He starts his own unofficial inquiries and finds himself retracing the English girl’s steps. She had been trying to find the hiding place in the lake of Mussolini’s legendary gold.

The Rudolf Valentino of the Italian police puts himself at risk by meeting up with the families of old Fascist supporters of Mussolini and allowing himself to be taken below the waters of the lake by under water explorers in attempts to find out the truth.

It is a well-written, gripping novel and has a twist in the tail.

Sadly, it was to be the fifth and final Peroni case from the masterly pen of Timothy Holme.

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Dead Lagoon

An Aurelio Zen mystery by Michael Dibdin

Returning to his native Venice to work on a case proves to be an emotional experience for Zen.

He moves into his old family home, which has been left empty for years, but finds it disturbing to meet up with former friends and neighbours and confront his past. The cold weather and the bleakness of the old house echo his mood. 

He is haunted by memories of his father, who disappeared while fighting in Russia during the war, but is still remembered and spoken about by an old man living nearby.

Zen is unofficially working on the disappearance of a rich American who had taken up residence in Venice, but to provide himself with a cover story and a plausible reason for being there, he takes it upon himself to look into complaints made by an elderly Venetian aristocrat that her palazzo is continually being broken into by people trying to frighten her.

He finds romance with the attractive daughter of one of his mother’s old friends, which helps to make his life more bearable as he goes about his business in a city whose every canal, alleyway and bridge he can remember intimately, despite having been away for so long.

While telling the story, Dibdin takes the reader on a very special tour of Venice, demonstrating his own deep knowledge and appreciation of the city.

As usual Zen has to put himself at risk and work outside the law and without the help of the police service to try to bring the true criminals and wrongdoers to justice at the end of a story that is both well told and gripping.


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The Gondola Scam

A Lovejoy narrative by Jonathan Gash

Antiques dealer Lovejoy travels to Venice in this novel in a bid to find out who committed a robbery that resulted in the deaths of two of his colleagues.

Renowned as a divvie, someone with unerring instincts who can tell the difference between a fake and a genuine antique, Lovejoy has been asked to work for a rich man trying to bring some of the priceless works of art out of the city.

But preferring to pursue his own lines of enquiry he travels independently to La Serenissima, the most serene republic, and attaches himself to a tour group.

He meets, and is distracted by, a succession of attractive women and he enjoys playing the tourist, appreciating the beauty that is everywhere in Venice.

He ends up being employed as a forger so that he can find out more about the criminal activities of the ruthless people involved in the scam, putting himself in danger.

It is a very readable book with a mystery at its heart that keeps you turning the pages.

Jonathan Gash also reveals a deep knowledge of and love for Venice, which he describes very well.

The Gondola Scam is a good book for anyone interested in works of art and Venice, written with humour, featuring believable characters, and set in the world of antiques dealing.

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Inspector Cataldo’s Criminal Summer

By Luigi Guicciardi 

The apparent suicide of an academic brings Inspector Cataldo to a quiet holiday town in the Apennines during a particularly hot summer.

Suspecting murder, he questions the dead man’s wife and friends and discovers a common link between them all with a graduation dinner held in the past. And he finds that a mysterious stranger has arrived in the town and has shaken up the delicate social balance of a group of people who have a lot to hide. 

Soon there is another death and the Inspector becomes desperate to uncover the motive behind the killings to prevent the murderer striking again. Suffering in the hot conditions, Inspector Cataldo becomes nostalgic for his native Sicily and remembers a past love and romantic disappointment while he strives to solve the case.

Translated from the Italian by Iain Halliday, this novel was originally published in Italy as La Calda Estate del Commissario Cataldo. 

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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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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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