Roma, Underground by Gabriel Valjan

Roma, Underground is a police procedural novel wrapped up in a continuing mystery story of a secret government agency.  The series is up to four novels (see below) and set to continue.  The female protagonist of this series, wonderfully named Alabaster when she isn't incognito as Bianca, works off and on for the secret government agency.  She teams up with law enforcement in Roma, Underground to help them trap some criminals red-handed.

The book is an interesting cross between TV's Alias and Camilleri's Montalbano books.  Each book in the series gives the reader a police case from law enforcement's perspective with all the teamwork needed to bring down the bad guys, plus there is the secret conspiracy stuff that draws our heroine into places she doesn't want to be, including dangerous situations. 

While the police case proceeds to a positive ending with Bianca's help, Alabaster has to deal with some spooky things and scary people having to do with her on again off again employer.  This is a very entertaining construction, and sure to please fans of both sorts of stories.

There is lots of local Roman flavor in the details of the story, with locations in Rome used well, and providing moments for the author to wax lyrical about such varied things as modern garbage collection and Emperor Nero's place, in consecutive paragraphs!  As the slow-to-develop romantic interest in the novel, Dante, says:

This is Rome.  The living, the dead, the past and the present - it's all the same here in Rome.

The world under Rome's streets, referenced in the book's title, plays a part in the story, too, so we get some very interesting visits to underground Rome, in the company of Dante, who is part of a group that maps the underground city.

Roma Underground is a group of speleologists.  We have specialized training in the basics of archaeology, climbing, and SCUBA, and our objective is to explore and map the underground city of Rome.

Alabaster/Bianca is a psychologically complex character who makes a wonderful anchor for the series.  She is a professional in the very nerdy profession of forensic accounting.  That doesn't mean men don't find her intriguing enough to attempt a romantic relationship with her. 

Those men should be forewarned, however, and perhaps demand a user's manual first, because Alabaster/Bianca is one difficult woman to love!  She is repressed, conflicted, morally ambiguous, adventurous, a number nerd, blunt, vain, insecure, and emotionally distant behind her tendency to intellectualize situations.  Dante reflects at one point:

...she was the hyper-rational one, almost without a need for emotion.

The author's writing style is literate with light humor and lovely turns of phase, making some of his prose read like prose poetry.  The style lightens for the purely police procedural sections, moving the crime story along nicely.  There is a skillful weaving together of past and present to tell the story and to build suspense.  There are some vulgarities but it is not excessive.  The narrative style is third-person limited usually from Alabaster/Bianca's point of view if she is in the scene, and from the point of view of other characters when she is not in the scene.

What about the mysterious government agency, Rendition?  Well, when they recruited Alabaster/Bianca they told her that they acted against destructive greed that threatened the U.S. economy, which set them against industrialists who try to cheat they capitalist system to the detriment of the country.  There turns out to be plenty of leeway in that description to create threatening situations for industrialists and for the forensic accountants who work for the agency.  That story continues throughout the series.

Book 1 - Roma, Underground

Savvy forensic accountant Alabaster Black is hiding in Rome from her former employer, covert U.S. organization “Rendition.” While there under an assumed name she meets Dante, an investigator, erstwhile explorer and member of the Roma Underground, a band of amateur archaeologists who map the city beneath Rome. With Italian artifacts disappearing at an alarming rate, Alabaster and Dante search for answers and create a trap for the thieves. Through a mysterious online contact Alabaster learns she is being followed, and with her safety at risk she is forced to rethink her chosen alliances and discover hidden truths about herself.

Pinterest board for the first book. https://www.pinterest.com/gvaljan/roma/

Book 2 - Wasp's Nest

In the highly anticipated sequel to Roma, Underground, Bianca returns to the U.S. for her former employer, the covert organization Rendition, to investigate Cyril Sargent and Nasonia Pharmaceutical. Although ambivalent about the assignment and uneasy about her online "friend," Loki, she is enticed into researching what Sargent is doing with insect genetics that might upset the world of cancer research and treatment. Old friends Farrugia and Gennaro uncover a twisted conspiracy from their past and join Bianca in Boston where they will experience conflicted loyalties, question allies, and confront uncertain enemies, as they're drawn into the wasp's nest.

Pinterest board for the second book. https://www.pinterest.com/gvaljan/wasp-s-nest/

Book 3 - Threading the Needle

Milan. Bianca’s curiosity gets a young university student murdered, but not before he gives her a file that details a secret weapon under development with defense contractor Adastra. Guilt may drive her to find justice for the slain Charlie Brooks, but she is warned by the mysterious Loki to stay away from this case that runs deep with conspiracy. Bianca must find a way to uncover government secrets and corporate alliances without returning Italy to one of its darkest hours, the decades of daily terrorism known as the “Years of Lead.”

Pinterest board for the third book.  https://www.pinterest.com/gvaljan/threading-the-needle/

Book 4 - Turning to Stone

Forensic accountant Alabaster Black has always been steps ahead of her former employer, Rendition, a clandestine and apparently lethal organization. Once the star investigator of financial crimes, she fled from the United States to Italy, under a new name: Bianca Nerini. She carries on her work with a group of trusted friends, although a mysterious contact by the name of Loki reaches out to her on occasion. In this fourth installment, Bianca is in Naples against the Camorra, a crime syndicate unlike the American or Sicilian mafia.

Pinterest board for the fourth book.  https://www.pinterest.com/gvaljan/turning-to-stone/

Here is a direct link to the first book in the series at Amazon.com:

Visit the author's website, or his Amazon Author's Page, or his blog.  You can also follow him on Facebook  and Twitter @GValjan.

The Hague by Candida Martinelli

An Italian with Europol deals with crime and women is the tagline for a romantic-crime novel, a Rom-Crime as I like to call it, that I have recently published.  It is for fans of European crime fiction, especially A.C. Baantjer's Inspector DeKok Series, which is set in The Netherlands, as is The Hague.  And it should hold appeal for fans of cozy mysteries, who enjoy clean mysteries with light romance.

In The Hague Europol Intelligence Officer Tony Sampaoli weaves together solutions to European crime puzzles with the help of four law enforcement friends and a consulting psychologist-graphologist.  Italian Tony takes on ripped-from-the-headlines cases set in Europe in the year 2000, while working to unify European Union policing practices.  Tony and his friends are mature characters at the top of their respective fields.

Europol's Original HQ in The Hague, The Netherlands

Europol, The European Police Office, an agency of the European Union, is based in The Hague in The Netherlands.  Contrary to popular-culture representations, Europol is not a police force like the F.B.I. that can conduct investigations and arrest suspects.  Europol is a bureaucratic entity, that collects data and offers training, while it assists with cooperation between police forces.  Tony is bored by his paper-pushing, meeting-chairing, training-coordinating job.

Tony relies on his law enforcement friends to provide him with interesting crime puzzles to keep his investigative skills honed, and to keep him sane.  Cases that Tony tackles include (stop here if you don't want to know until you read the book!)  a body that mysteriously appears in the middle of a milk cow paddock, another body that's found in a cement mixer, four students and their sailboat disappearing while sailing from Holland to England, and an American professor who dies at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport.

Europol's Old Offices in The Hague

Psychologist-graphologist Jennifer Eastman uses the study and practice of handwriting as a therapy tool, graphotherapy, to help troubled children.  She also works as a graphologist, a handwriting analyst, with clients in business and law enforcement, a common practice in many European countries.  One of her clients is Tony Sampaoli, a man who has captured her interest from day one.

At Europol he was much more subdued, restrained and professional. Socially he was lively, warm, spontaneous. He was wonderful.

The Dutch Polder Landscape

Tony's friends don't need a psychological report to know that Tony Sampaoli has a problem with women.  Despite his interest in Jennifer since day one, he's yet to make a move, even when the opportunities are dropped in his lap.  

Her short blond hair was cut in a style similar the late Princess Diana's. Her hazel eyes stood out against her pearly skin. Her high cheek bones set off her small nose and well formed lips. Her conservative, professional-looking clothing couldn't hide her womanly curves.

While Tony works to weave together solutions to the criminal cases, his friends work to help Tony weave together his damaged love-life, but there are forces stronger than Tony at work in his subconscious.  The 3rd-person omniscient narration lets us into the minds of many of the characters. 

 

The Flat Dutch Landscape

The Hague is clean fiction, which means the book has no vulgarities, no explicit sex scenes, and no in-scene violence. This doesn't mean this is a book for children, it just means there is nothing offensive in the book. The focus is on engaging the reader with interesting stories from Europe, partly stories of the efforts to integrate the various countries into the European Union experiment, and partly stories from the crime world.

The reader can also gain an insight on what it is like to work as an ex-patriot in Europe, and especially as an Italian ex-patriot working in a Northern European country. The most difficult things for the ex-pat are also the most mundane, the things most people take for granted like food, company, the weather, and language.

Tony checked that the radiators under the windows were working and were on high. During the fall, spring and winter months, he tended to check them several times a day, sure that the cold he felt in the marrow of his bones was because the radiators had stopped working. To date, they had not broken down; the building was just old and drafty, the heating too weak, the windows poorly insulated, and Tony was from Rome, Italy.

The European Union Flag

The Hague is a book for those who wish to have a glimpse into another world, and a glimpse into the life of an Italian ex-pat policeman in The Netherlands. It is also a realistic mature romance.

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

Here is a two-minute introduction to the city of Den Haag, The Hague:

 

Cooking Spirits (Angie Amalfi Mystery) by Joanne Pence

Cooking Spirits is the latest, or perhaps the last, book in the Angie Amalfi Mystery Series; it is not clear which.  Because the story seemed to be making a happy end of many long running threads in the series, such as Angie's search for a career and for married love, I assumed it was a late addition to the series, six years after the previous book, to give the fans an ending for their beloved character.  But then the closure didn't arrive.

Spoiled, Italian-American Angie Amalfi has 14 books in which she tries and fails in a career, struggles to find a secure mate but seems to fail, gets involved in a mystery and with much help solves it.  For fans of cozy mysteries featuring an Italian-American amateur detective, that's a lot of books of fun, relaxing reading to look forward to!

Her inability to create a rewarding career for herself was one of the banes of her life.

The books in the series are:

1. Something's Cooking
2. Too Many cooks
3. Cooking up Trouble
4. Cooking Most Deadly
5. Cook's Night Out
6. Cooks Overboard
7. A Cook in Time
8. To Catch a Cook
9. Bell, Cook, and Candle
10. If Cooks Could Kill
11. Two Cooks a-Killing
12. Courting Disaster
13. Red Hot Murder
14. Da Vinci Cook
15. Cooking Spirits

Angie lives very comfortably in San Francisco, supported by her wealthy property tycoon father.  For most of the books, Angie's love interest is San Francisco Homicide Detective Paavo, and yes, that is his first name.  True to a seemingly universal cozy rule, both Angie and Paavo are drop-dead-gorgeous.  Angie is also a clothes horse.

She is loudly Italian-American, too, as she explains to a prospective wedding-planner:

I'm not a blue person.  I'm Italian!

I'm not really sure what that is supposed to mean, since the Italian football team is know as the Azzuri, the Blues.  But Angie has the requisite big, intrusive family, lots of close relatives, over-protective parents, and an obsession with food.

With all of Angie's skills, and her failure to find a wedding-planner for her big event with Paavo, I thought the author was setting up the big finish of having Angie finally find her ideal career:  Wedding Planner.  But that didn't happen. 

The planning and preparation for the wedding and for their life together takes up about half of the book, but we don't end with the wedding, or with a resolution to the "where are we going to live" question that runs through the whole book, either.  Nor the question about Paavo's emotional loyalties.

15 books is a long time to keep the threads weaving, or the balls up in the air, so to speak, so you can't blame me for expecting a resolution in this late-addition book to the series.  Glancing at some of the reviews, I suspect I'm not the only fan who was looking for closure.  But if you are an Angie fan, it looks like her story will continue.

Cooking Spirits is actually two books wrapped around each other:  Paavo's police procedural case of double homicide, and Angie's house-hunting and wedding problems.  Angie's part of the story involves a paranormal storyline.

There is a strong sense of place in the book, with lots of mentioning of streets, buildings, districts and places.  Many of the characters from the previous books are included in the story.  There are three recipes at the end of the book.  And we are treated to the menu of all of Angie's main meals. 

This is a leisurely paced book, probably of most interest to Angie and Paavo fans.  There is an exciting finish, but not a lot of resolution at the end of the book for Angie and Paavo.  It feels like the author may be planning on continuing the series for a few books more.

From the book's description:

Culinary queen Angie Amalfi has put aside her gourmet utensils to concentrate on planning her upcoming wedding to San Francisco homicide detective Paavo Smith. What could possibly go wrong?

Instead of the answer to her heart's dreams, she scrambles to deal with wedding planners with bizarre ideas, wedding dresses that don't flatter, squabbling relatives with hurt feelings, a long-suffering groom, and worries over where she and Paavo will live after the wedding. But all of that pales when Angie finds the perfect house for them, except for one little problem--the house may be haunted.

Many years ago, the newlyweds who lived in the house were murdered, and the case was never solved. While Angie pursues what happened to the couple who now may be haunting the house, Paavo obsesses over his own case involving the murder of unlikely lovers. The trail leads to ghosts, murders, unhappy families, and enough obnoxious wedding buttinskis to fill a graveyard. But when eerie happenings turn deadly, Angie fears she may be spirited away for good! 

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com, and to the first book in the series:

Please visit the author's website.  

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

Falling in Love (Guido Brunetti Mystery) by Donna Leon

The latest books in this long police procedural/mystery series set in Venice, Italy, have read less like novels and more like novelizations of TV episodes.  Falling in Love is no exception.  The construction of the book is like an episode:  we meet the victim and see an incident, later the policeman is called in and he investigates, an action elevates the threat, and that threat continues until the exciting climax comes and the policeman leads the shaken woman home. 

What we don't get is Brunetti acting in any way to save the day or the victim.  I think the story could have existed, with very little change, without Brunetti being involved at all, which is quite odd.  If you are a diehard Brunetti fan, you will get your scenes with his family, his co-workers, his boss, his parents-in-law, and scenes of Brunetti wandering the beautiful streets and bridges of Venice.  We even have the requisite comment:

"We live in Paradise, don't we?"

However, we spend much of the book in the mind and life of the opera singer, Flavia.  We learn much about the life of an opera diva in Falling in Love, which I received as a review-copy.  The catch phrases "Too much information" and "More than I wanted to know" popped into my mind while reading this book.  But if you are an avid opera fan, you may find those parts of the book interesting.

Flavia was an abrasive character introduced in the first book in the series, who made a return in a later book.  Her back story is more hinted at than mined in this story, making some of the references by the character confusing if you have not read the previous two books in which she appears. 

Quickly:  she is a bisexual woman with an ex-husband and children, who had to give up her lesbian lover in order to not lose custody of her children during her divorce.  Her references to her past lesbian relationships are odd, to say the least, in Falling in Love, dismissing them as something akin to a hobby:  "having given that up".

Donna Leon's Brunetti novels are known for the abrasive views of the author intruding on the story.  But there are few of those intrusion in Falling in Love.  But there are some odd asides in Falling in Love, such as:

...Griffoni asked with the deference beautiful women -- if they are intelligent -- use when dealing with women who are less attractive than they are.

And much of the book is not about a crime or criminal, but about how horrible fans of celebrities can be:

...all these people crowding round, all of them wanting something, to tell you something about themselves.  They think they want to tell you how much they liked your performance, but what they really want is to make you remember them.  Or like them.

Most of the narration in the book is in third-person limited, but there is some omniscient narration, too.  The point-of-view is quite often Flavia's, but more often Guido Brunetti's.  Through Flavia's eyes, in the beginning of the book, we see Guido's trademark affection for his wife, his sense of humor and his self-deprecating attitude.  When we switch to Brunetti's point of view, we get to see how extremely observant he is, and how quickly he can read people.

The British single quotes in place of double quotes may annoy some readers.  And the abrupt ending will disappoint fans, just as it did in the previous book in the series.  The readers never gets to learn how the culprit managed the crimes. 

The books in the Guido Brunetti Mystery Series:

1. Death at La Fenice (reviewed on this site)
   
2. Death in a Strange Country
3. Dressed for Death
4. Death and Judgment
5. Acqua Alta
6. Quietly in Their Sleep
7. A Noble Radiance
8. Fatal Remedies
9. Friends in High Places
10. Sea of Troubles
11. Wilful Behavior
12. Uniform Justice
13. Doctored Evidence
14. Blood From a Stone
15. Through the Glass, Darkly
16. Suffer the Little Children
17. Girl of His Dreams
18. About Face
19. A Question of Belief
20. Drawing Conclusions
21. Beastly Things
22. The Golden Egg
23. By Its Cover (reviewed on this site)
    
24. Falling in Love (reviewed on this site)

From the book's description (some spoilers):

Donna Leon’s Death at La Fenice, the first novel in her beloved Commissario Guido Brunetti series, introduced readers to the glamorous and cutthroat world of opera and one of Italy’s finest living sopranos, Flavia Petrelli; then a suspect in the poisoning of a renowned German conductor.  Years after Brunetti cleared her name, Flavia has returned to Venice and La Fenice to sing the lead in Tosca.

Brunetti and his wife, Paola, attend an early performance, and Flavia receives a standing ovation.  Back in her dressing room, she finds bouquets of yellow roses; too many roses. Every surface of the room is covered with them.  An anonymous fan has been showering Flavia with these beautiful gifts in London, St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, and now, Venice, but she no longer feels flattered.

A few nights later, invited by Brunetti to dine at his in-laws’ palazzo, Flavia confesses her alarm at these excessive displays of adoration.  And when a talented young Venetian singer who has caught Flavia’s attention is savagely attacked, Brunetti begins to think that Flavia’s fears are justified in ways neither of them imagined.  He must enter in the psyche of an obsessive fan before Flavia, or anyone else, comes to harm.

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com.

Visit the author's website.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

Death and the Olive Grove (Inspector Bordelli Mystery) by Marco Vichi

Florence, Italy, in April of 1964 is the backdrop for this historical mystery, which is book two in the Inspector Bordelli Mystery Series.  The first case is mentioned in the book, so it is advisable to read the books in the series in order.  I review the first book in the series here on this site.

Police Inspector Bordelli is still cynical, a smoker (ex-smokers should stay clear of the Bordelli books!), an experienced policeman, victim to intrusive wartime flashbacks, sympathetic to the those on the low end of society, unpredictable, a binge drinker and eater, intuitive, and immature in his relations with women due to abuse in his childhood.  Although in this book Bordelli does spend the night with a woman, a dominatrix, of course, since that is what his past has doomed him to seek out.

Book 1 in the Series, reviewed on this site

Italian post WWII politics continues to leave Bordelli cold:

...the first twenty years of the republic had done more harm to Italy than the Fascists and Nazis combined.

Bordelli laments the materialistic and greedy newly-rich industrialists, the poverty-stricken underclass, the abandoned elderly, and the abandoned countryside.

The translation is missing some punctuation marks, some carriage returns, some subjunctive verbs, just like the first book in the series, which is a translation from Italian.  And it uses the British single quote in place of the double quote, which can be confusing now and then.  There are footnotes explaining some of the references to Italian culture and history, just as in the first book.

Book 3 in the series

There is more of a plotline in Death and the Olive Grove, with two main cases for Bordelli, and lots of bodies, some are very disturbingly children's bodies, but the series is more psychological novels than police procedurals.  We learn more about Bordelli's past:  his wartime experiences, his police work, and how he met certain people in his life.  The reader gets to revisit all the secondary characters from the first novel, one by one, and learn a bit more about them.

1960s Florence, Italy, was very different from today's tourist-swamped town, and the author enjoys pointing that out.  Here are 19 seconds of footage showing the main square with Fiat Cinquecentos and other mini-cars parked and driving about.  Fiat 500s are still to be seen, as a rarity, but cars are not allowed to drive in the main square any more!

 

The themes of the book feel much more important to the author than the police cases:  war reverberates through a society, damaging psyches, bodies and family ties.  You could describe Death and the Olive Grove as a study in the various forms of grief.  If you enjoy your police procedurals with high suspense, you may not enjoy the Inspector Bordelli books.  But if you enjoy getting into the head of a very messed up man who lived through some very interesting times in Italian history, you may enjoy the Bordelli books, like I do.

Book 4 in the series

From the description of Death in an Olive Grove:

The sequel to the critically acclaimed Death in August, which finds Inspector Bordelli facing a nightmarish murder mystery

It is April of 1964, and the cruelest month is breeding bad weather and worse news.  And plenty of disturbing news is coming to Florence detective Inspector Bordelli. Bordelli’s friend, Casimiro, insists he’s discovered the body of a man in a field above Fiesole.  Bordelli races to the scene, but doesn’t find any sign of a corpse.

Only a couple of days later, a little girl is found at Villa Ventaglio.  She has been strangled, and there is a horrible bite mark on her belly.  Then another young girl is found murdered, with the same macabre signature.  And meanwhile, Casimiro has disappeared without a trace.

This new investigation marks the start of one of the darkest periods of Bordelli’s life:  a nightmare without end, as black as the sky above Florence.

These are the books in the Inspector Bordelli Mystery Series so far:

• Death in August (set in summer 1963)
• Death and the Olive Grove (set in April 1964)
• Death in Sardinia (set in December 1965)
• Death in the Tuscan Hills (set in 1967)

Here are direct links at Amazon.com to Marco Vichi's Death and the Olive Grove:

Please visit the author's website. 

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

The Fourth Secret (Inspector Montalbano Series) by Andrea Camilleri

More novella than novel, this latest translation in the Italian Inspector Montalbano Series, a police procedural series set in Sicily, will satisfy adult fans.  If you are a fan of the television film series adapted from the books, then you will already know this story.  The books were adapted faithfully, and the actors portray the characters with just as much faithfulness, that you will surely picture the show just as I did while reading The Fourth Secret.

The Montalbano books (and the TV show) are rich with food, colleagues, Montabano's home by the sea, and his relationship with his long-distance, long-suffering girlfriend Livia.  Montalbano is an egocentric workaholic who is not always decent with his work mates, and almost never decent to his girlfriend, who is really just an easy woman for the emotionally stunted Montalbano.

Here is a fun fan promo for the new Montalbano episode coming on BBC television, which gives a great idea of what the books and the series are like:

If you are not familiar with the characters or locations, then you might have difficulty reading The Fourth Secret, since the author provides very little background information.  It is assumed that you are a fan of the series and have read the other books. 

The author loves to highlight in his books the sometimes eccentric beliefs and behaviors of his Sicilian-Italian compatriots.  He relishes their fears, neuroticism, amorality and poor male-female relationships.  That is where most of the humor comes from in the book.

Montalbano's famous temper is on display.  He is very short of patience and loves to take his frustrations out on objects and people.  At one point, Montalbano nearly destroys a public telephone, and he is called on it by a carabinieri marshal:

Montalbano came back to his senses.  That was the last thing he needed, a brawl between a police inspector and a carabinieri marshal.  And who was going to come and restore order, the border patrol?

There are frequent vulgarities in the book, some sex, and many cases of confusing pronouns.  Some punctuation marks are missing, as are some subjunctive verbs and past perfect forms.  Some of the paragraphing is odd.   

Here is a glimpse of Montalbano's temper and his poor relationship with Livia, his girlfriend, from the TV film series:

Political tirades punctuate the text, perhaps a sounding board for the author.

...this beautiful Europe designed only to please the banks.

Because the translations have been done so long after the original Italian books, The Fourth Secret, La Paura di Montalbano in Italian, could actually be called a historical mystery novel.  It is set in a Europe where Italy still uses the Lira, for example. 

Montalbano's relationship with food is unique.  He experiences food as a sort of religious worship, or meditative trance.

He polished off a huge plate of fried mullet, managing to reach the concentration of a Hindu Brahmin...

I have another page on this site about the series.  But here is the list of books in the Montalbano series to date as English translations:

1. The Shape of Water  (La forma dell’acqua)
2. The Terracotta Dog - (Il cane di terracotta)
3. The Snack Thief (Il ladro di merendine)
4. The Voice of the Violin  (La voce del violino)
5. Excursion to Tindari  (La gita a Tindari)
6. The Scent of the Night  (L’odore della notte)
7. Rounding the Mark  (Il giro di boa)
8. The Patience of the Spider (La pazienza del ragno)
9. The Paper Moon  (La Luna di Carta)
10. August Heat  (La Vampa d'Agosto)
11. The Wings of the Sphinx  (Le Ali della Sfinge)
12. The Track of Sand (La pista di Sabbia)
13. The Potter's Field  (Il campo del vasaio)
14. The Age of Doubt (L'età del dubbio)
15. The Dance of the Seagull (La danza del gabbiano)
16. Treasure Hunt (La caccia al tesoro)
17. Angelica's Smile (Il sorriso di Angelica)
18. Game of Mirrors (Il gioco degli specchi

From the book's description:

In the latest mystery featuring Inspector Montalbano, a deadly accident at a building site prompts a search with shocking revelations

Yesterday morning around seven thirty, an Albanian construction worker, age thirty-eight, Pashko Puka, a legal resident with a work permit, hired by the Santa Maria construction company owned by Alfredo Corso, fell from a scaffold that had been erected during the construction of an apartment building in Tonnarello, between Vigata and Montelusa. His coworkers, who immediately rushed to his aid, unfortunately discovered he had died.

There have been six events euphemistically called “tragedies in the workplace” in the past month. Six deaths caused by an inexplicable disregard for safety regulations. When the local magistrate opens an investigation, Inspector Montalbano is on the case. But Montalbano soon discovers that these seemingly unrelated incidents are only part of a larger network of crimes.

This intricate novella is a testament to Andrea Camilleri’s talent for building engaging plots that continue to charm readers by the thousands.

The Montalbano books are published by Mondadori.

Direct link to Montalbano Series at Mondadori Italy

Here is a direct link to The Fourth Secret at Amazon.com:

Here are links to the first 6 books in the series at Amazon.com:

Please visit the author Camilleri's website.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.

Death in August (Inspector Bordelli Mystery) by Marco Vichi

Death in August is a book with an identity crisis:  it is a psychological novel dressed up as a police procedural but marketed as a cozy mystery novel.  The original Italian books, less bound by genre, have dark covers reflecting the dark themes in the series.  The English translations offered as Kindle editions sport cozy mystery watercolor covers with a nostalgic tint that completely misrepresent the books' contents.

The series is set in the past, in the 1960s to be precise, and it is set there for a reason:  to allow Italians to laugh, sometimes wryly, at their former selves, with the benefit of hindsight from the perspective of the world today looking back on a seemingly ancient time.  So much social, political and economic change has occurred since the 1960s that looking back on those years really does feel like we are observing an ancient culture.

 Book Two in the Inspector Bordelli Mystery Series

In Death in August, we get to observe how women were non-existent in the workplace, men smoked like chimneys, one could drink alcohol at work, safely married women could flaunt themselves at men for self-validation or to make their husband jealous and attentive, men could ogle women as if they were going to attack them without anyone thinking it odd, drunks were left to wander neighborhoods until they died of the disease, DDT was used in most every home to kill mosquitoes, veterans of wars suffered their PTSDs without any help and with people just looking the other way when they acted odd, and so on and so on...

The scene that is likely misunderstood the most by English-speaking readers is one in which an old bomb-maker for the Italian WWII Resistance laments that young people in Italy lack the courage to fight with violence, if necessary, for the country and for their ideals.  Non-Italians might see the scene as a lament by a retired soldier for the lazy, luxury-loving youth he sees around him in post-war Italy.  But for the Italian reader, the scene would produce a wry laugh, because they know that within a decade or so, young Italians would be planting bombs, killing people, kidnapping people and posting manifestos all over Italy, calling themselves the Red Brigades terror group, and acting against all they see as bad in their country.

 Book Three in the Inspector Bordelli Mystery Series

Much is lost in the translation, although the translator provides some footnotes collected at the back of the text to explain some cultural reference.  I was not happy with the translation.  There were errors in punctuation, paragraphing, and phrasing.  There were a handful of typos.  And the translator seemed oblivious of the subjunctive form in English.

The protagonist of the series is a police inspector named Bordelli.  We learn that he was a sensitive, dreamy boy who was repeatedly sexually abused when he was eight years old, by a household maid.  The scenes are excruciating to read, and I am amazed that I see no mention of these scenes in any reviews, nor any mention of them in the book's description. 

Unlike the oblivious writer of the Stephanie Plum novels, who put a similar abuse scene in her first book in her series, the author of the Inspector Bordelli Mystery Series understands the long-term effect this kind of abuse can have on a person, and he links it directly to his protagonist's character. 

 Book Four in the Inspector Bordelli Mystery Series in its cozy-covered form

So, Bordelli is often self-destructive, destructive of his emotional attachments to women, infantile-like and passive in his more prolonged relationship with a woman who is a former prostitute who pampers him no doubt because she has had her fill of macho men.  Bordelli is fifty-three, unmarried, lonely, unhappy with the state of Italy, scared by the war and his PTSD and by the childhood abuse he suffered.

Bordelli is haunted by his time in the Italian Resistance during the Italian Civil War that was low-level at the beginning of WWII, and very hot following Italy's surrender to the Allies.  He suffers chronic insomnia and flashbacks.  His colleagues accept all this with good grace, but also with deep concern for the man's health.  Bordelli is a haunted, disturbed man who will probably never find much peace.

The colleagues and assorted group of walking-wounded friends of Bordelli's know that the man may be damaged goods, but he is good at police work.  He also has a very moral perspective on the law that allows him to bend it when justice would be better served that way.  Here is Bordelli telling his boss why he lets some poor criminals walk, now and then:

"Let me tell you something, Dr. Inzipone.  When I returned from the war, I hoped I had done my small part to liberate Italy from the shit we were in; but now all I see is mountains of shit, everywhere..."

...  

Inzipone eyed him, clenching his teeth.  He knew there was little he could do about Bordelli's methods, because he was, after all, an excellent inspector, he was loved by the entire department, and everybody knew that, in the end, he was right, there was too much poverty about.

I enjoyed the author's prose style.  The narration is third-person limited, so we get to see into Bordelli's mind, memories, fleeting thoughts, daydreams and nightmares.  Here are some examples:

It pleased him to see that things, and not only people, suffered the wear and tear of age.

The young were all fleeing the countryside to work in the city.  Nobody seemed to want to live any more between the soil and the cow pats.

Nominally, the book is a police procedural, with the usual introduction of a case, the forensic details, the victims, the suspects, the investigations, etc.  But these are just things to give some structure to a novel that is really about the man, Bordelli, and his demons.  The murder case is not very challenging or mysterious.  We spend most of our time just hanging out with Bordelli and his odd group of male friends, and roaming the 1960s.

There are long sections in the book about the war and Bordelli's war experiences.  There are just as many parts of the book about meals and especially one, long, elaborate dinner-party that Bordelli throws for his buddies, that is little more than a long drinking bout interspersed by some food.

Like Andrea Camillieri's books featuring police commissioner Montalbano (Camillieri writes an endorsement of the series on the cover of the book), the universe in Death in August is richly male, with women appearing only as disruptions to the delicately balanced workings of male-ville.  The women are described from the outside only, since the insides are a complete mystery to the men.

About the book's identity crisis... I enjoyed the book for the psychological novel that it was; it was meaty, intelligent, honest, and wryly funny.  For a police procedural, it was lacking in suspense and mystery.  And it is in no way, shape, or form a cozy murder mystery.  Know what you are buying if you choose to buy this book!  I hope this review helps.

These are the books in the Inspector Bordelli Mystery Series so far:

• Death in August (set in summer 1963)
• Death and the Olive Grove (set in April 1964)
• Death in Sardinia (set in December 1965)
• Death in the Tuscan Hills (set in 1967)

From Death in August's description:

A new crime series full of Italian flavor – the first novel in the Inspector Bordelli series, set in 1960s Florence.

Florence, summer 1963. Inspector Bordelli is one of the few detectives left in the deserted city. He spends his days on routine work and his nights tormented by the heat and mosquitoes. With the help of his young protégé, the victim’s eccentric brother, and a semi-retired petty thief, the inspector begins a murder investigation.  Each suspect has a solid alibi, but there is something that doesn’t quite add up...

Here are direct links at Amazon.com to Marco Vichi's Inspector Bordelli books:

Please visit the author's website. 

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.