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Showing 1 - 6 of
6 matches in All Departments
Parma. A multiple pile-up occurs on the autostrada into the city. A
truck transporting cattle skids off the road. Dozens of cows and
bulls go on the rampage, injured and crazed. In the chaos, the
burned body of a young woman is found at the side of the road. Her
death has no apparent link to the carnage. Commissario Soneri is
assigned the case. It is a welcome distraction: his mercurial lover
Angela has decided to pursue other options, leaving him even more
morose than usual. The dead woman is identified as Nina Iliescu, a
Romanian immigrant whose beauty had enchanted a string of wealthy
lovers. Temptress, muse, angel - she was all things to all men. Her
murder conceals a crime and a sacrilege, and even in death she has
a surprise waiting for Soneri.
Italy's Maigret returns in another smouldering noir from a master
of the police procedural "A master storyteller" Barry Forshaw,
Independent Parma is blanketed in snow, but this pristine, white
veneer cannot mask the stench of corruption. Its officials are no
longer working for its people - only for themselves - crime is out
of control and resentment festers in every district. Commissario
Soneri remains at heart an idealist, so the state of Parma wounds
him more than most. And now he is presented with three mysteries at
once, each more impenetrable than the last. In a river creek on the
outskirts of the city, tipped off by a local, he finds a mobile
phone that rings through the night but holds no data; an elderly
patient with senile dementia is reported missing from a hospice;
and the mayor of Parma, who was reported as taking a holiday on the
ski slopes, has disappeared off the face of the earth - just when
he seemed certain to be implicated in a seismic corruption scandal
at city hall.
Rain falls relentlessly on the Po valley in northern Italy, and the
river is swollen to its limits. A huge barge leaves its moorings,
steering an erratic course downstream and away into the foggy
night. When finally it runs aground hours later, the bargeman is
nowhere to be found. That same evening, Commissario Soneri is
summoned to investigate the apparent suicide of a man in nearby
Parma. He and the bargeman were brothers, and when the detective
discovers that they served together in the fascist militia fifty
years earlier, the incidents seem likely to be linked. Resentments
dating from the savage civil strife between Fascists and Partisans
in the closing years of the war still weigh heavily, and as the
flood waters begin to ebb, the river yields up its secrets: tales
of past brutality, bitter rivalry and revenge. Valerio Varesi is a
penetrating analyst of his country's dark and undigested history.
Italy's Maigret returns in another smouldering noir from a master
of the police procedural "A master storyteller" Barry Forshaw,
Independent A few days before Christmas, with Parma gripped by
frost and fog, Ghitta Tagliavini, the elderly owner of a guesthouse
in the old town centre, is found murdered in her apartment. The
case is assigned to Commissario Soneri, but the investigation holds
a painful, personal element that sends waves of nostalgia sweeping
through him. Tagliavini's guesthouse is where Soneri met his late
wife Ada, and where the young couple spent unforgettable hours in
each other's company. But the present can embitter even the
sweetest memories. An old photograph of Ada with another man sends
Soneri into a spiral of despondency, ever more so when he realises
her death may be linked to Tagliavina's lucrative sideline as a
backstreet abortionist and faith healer. Though Soneri would like
nothing more than to be allowed to drop the case, he doggedly
persists, uncovering at last, along with the truth behind
Tagliavini's death, rife corruption at Parma's rotten heart and a
raft of ghosts from Italy's divisive past. Translated from the
Italian by Joseph Farrell
Commissario Soneri returns home for a hard-earned autumn holiday,
hoping to spend a few days mushroom picking on the slopes of
Montelupo. This isolated village relies on the salame factory
founded in the post-war years by Palmiro Rodolfi, and now run by
his son, Paride. On arrival, Soneri is greeted by anxious rumours
about the factory's solvency and the younger Rodolfi's whereabouts.
Not long afterwards, a decomposing body is found in the woods. In
the shadow of Montelupo, carabinieri prepare to apprehend their
chief suspect - an ageing woodsman who defended the same mountains
from S.S. commandos during the war.
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