Maurizio de Giovanni’s sixth entry in the series of Neapolitan novels starring Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi will delight fans of the series and, I suspect, send new readers thronging to bookstores to get some of his earlier novels. Set in 1932, during the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, this novel shows Mussolini as he consolidates his power and imposes his fascism more broadly. The action begins when Viper, the most beautiful prostitute at Il Paradiso, a bordello, is murdered on the job. As her professional time was almost completely occupied with only two clients who have alibis – a wealthy man who specializes in the sale of religious statuettes and trinkets and a young man from her hometown who wants to marry her – the investigation soon widens to the whole of Naples. De Giovanni’s novels have become increasingly sophisticated and complex in their structure in the course of this series. At the same time, his comfort with his odd group of characters, his relaxed narrative tone, and his sometimes humorous details provide a teasing narrative which will keep readers smiling and guessing throughout. Readers new to de Giovanni will find that they gain most of the background they need through the narrative, though long-time readers will enjoy this even more. Everyone will agree, I suspect, that this is de Giovanni’s best novel yet – great fun!
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By now, most people who are here reading this review have already read at least one of the first two books in the “Neapolitan trilogy” by Elena Ferrante, of which this is the third novel. (A fourth entry in the series is expected now in 2015). Dramatic and intense, these novels read like operatic librettos, with two main characters, young girls from Naples who meet as children, sharing their tumultuous childhoods, and then, in succeeding novels, their teenage and adult lives. Despite their early closeness, the girls move in completely different directions as they get older, living out their different goals and objectives, but remaining friends through the traumas and uncertainties of their early years and the various political movements in which may have been caught up as young adults. The brighter girl, Lila, or Lina, Cerullo, is not allowed to continue the education which would have allowed her to take advantage of her immense intellect, instead marrying as a teenager. Her less creative but competent and organized friend, Elena, also a good student and with a supportive family, goes on to college and eventually becomes a writer. Though she has promised in the past that she will not betray Lila by writing about their own tangled history, Elena appears to be the author of this novel, which begins when both women are in their sixties (probably in the late 1960s through mid-1970s), a time in which Elena is successful and living elsewhere, and Lila has disappeared from Naples, leaving behind her son Gennaro (Rino) as Elena’s only contact.
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In his second novel of what appears to be the beginning of a series, Neapolitan author Diego De Silva reintroduces hapless attorney Vincenzo Malinconico, a man lacking in ambition, commitment, and self-awareness. Vincenzo has managed to stay out of the public eye, since his last outing, leading a conveniently quiet, though not necessarily satisfying, life. His wife, a psychologist, left him for another man more than two years ago, and he has had his own relationships, the most recent of which, with a gorgeous fellow-attorney, is currently on the rocks. Not surprisingly, given his lack of ambition, his caseload is almost non-existent: “I’m not a tough guy,” he admits. “If you want to know the truth, I doubt I’ve ever made a real decision in my whole life…I’m not a multiple-options kind of guy, really.” His life changes on a simple trip to the supermarket, where the engineer friend of a former client approaches him and speaks to him, asking Vincenzo, out of the blue, if he represents criminal cases. Engineer Romulo Sesti Orfeo suddenly warns him that something is about to happen. A hostage situation in the supermarket then ensues, and Vincenzo is the only only one who can defuse the situation. Funny, satiric.
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In this loving, and even exhilarating, memoir of his son Tito’s life, Brazilian author Diogo Mainardi introduces the reader to Tito from the moment of his birth in Venice, a birth bungled beyond belief by the doctor who delivered him. Mainardi and his wife Anna had been living in Venice, and, under the spell of this magical city and, especially, of the beautiful Scuola Grande di San Marco, designed by Pietro Lombardo in 1489 and converted into a hospital in 1808, Mainardi wanted his son’s birth to be in this special building, which Ezra Pound celebrated in one of his cantos for its perfect beauty. As Mainardi and Anna make their way on foot through the piazza on their way to Lombardo’s Scuola Grande di San Marco for the birth, they pass Andrea del Verrochio’s statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, thought by many to be the “most glorious equestrian statue in the world.” Mainardi, overcome at this moment, is “in the grip of the same stupid aestheticism as Ezra Pound…I could only associate the perfect art of Pietro Lombardo [and Andrea del Verrochio] with an equally perfect birth. Because [such] Good, would be incapable of creating Evil…[or] a bungled birth.” He was wrong.
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The ninth year of the Fascist Era, 1931, is almost over, and the residents, at least those who have managed to keep food on the table, are getting ready for Christmas. Within this setting Maurizio de Giovanni develops his fifth novel in which Commissario Ricciardi is challenged by a terrible murder, this one, the murder of a husband and wife from a wealthy family. The husband Emanuele Garofalo is a rising star as a Centurion in a fascist-inspired seaport militia, which governs the port, its boats, its fishermen, and all the fish being brought in to market. The possibilities for corruption and graft are enormous, and Garofalo, who acquired his position by making false claims against his boss, is up to his neck in criminal activities. The bodies of the couple are found when the zampognari, two young men who help celebrate the season by playing the Neapolitan bagpipe, come to the Garofalos’ house to play for them in the lead-up to Christmas. Terrified, the young men immediately call the police, and Commissario Ricciardi and Brigadier Maione dutifully appear. In this fifth novel in the Commissario Ricciardi series, which opens two months after the previous novel, The Day of the Dead, in which Ricciardi was nearly killed in an automobile accident, the author continues the characters and on-going subplots well familiar to those who have read the earlier books. A series of developing mysteries make this the most complex novel of the series so far, and its vibrant setting at Christmas, filled with all the traditions, fanfare, and customary foods of the holiday season make it the most colorful. Ominous soliloquies by the murderer (or potential murderers) begin with the opening page, and draw the reader into a sick mind (or minds), while also providing hints that keep the reader constantly looking for clues during the action.
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