An efficient and intriguing, if sometimes bumpy, crime tale.
A wealthy Sicilian businessman with shady connections handles threats and opportunities in this novel.
Life is good for 55-year-old Dr. Pasquale Nebrodi, a respected and affluent mover and shaker in Taormina. With his beautiful wife, Donna Rosa, he lives in a palatial villa lavishly supplied with contemporary art. Inspired by such favorite books as Machiavelli’s The Prince and Donald Trump and Tony Schwartz’s The Art of the Deal, Don Pasquale has a hugely ambitious project in view: a bridge across the Strait of Messina, something that’s been dreamed of since Roman times. The killing of Mafia boss Nunzio Rizzo removes one obstacle to the project, and Don Pasquale anticipates smooth sailing in the form of 650 million euros of funding from the European Investment Bank. When the bank declines to back the businessman, worried about Mafia entanglement, he has some maneuvering to do, flying to England to rally financial support from his London club, whose members include the unscrupulous wealthy. It’s a complicated deal with rich potential for several income streams, but Don Pasquale’s chances suddenly improve when convulsive Italian politics put him on the short list to head a technical government. Meanwhile, the case of a wandering man with amnesia whose notebook includes the name Don Pasquale is looked into by Inspector Filippo Bellini, a childhood friend of the entrepreneur’s. The amnesiac is Anthony Caruso of Toronto, as the petty thieves who assaulted him, Pippo Greco and Luca Mosca, learn from his stolen passport. With Pippo’s Canadian cousin, they try to extort half a million dollars from Caruso’s distraught wife, supposedly as ransom. Then Donna Rosa, convinced that her husband is cheating on her in England, jealously begins a dangerous affair with Don Pasquale’s PR man; Bellini investigates the deadly consequences. Just as Don Pasquale’s fortunes are rising to the greatest heights, downfall looms.
Manera, author of several novels as well as nonfiction books and a memoir, writes a fast-paced story that wastes no time in building to its climax. He shows a keen understanding of Italian and specifically Sicilian politics, business practices, and culture; matters such as the complicated Italian Parliamentary system are explained clearly, sometimes in helpful footnotes. He also makes good use of Mount Etna as a metaphor for Don Pasquale’s rise and possible fall, as Bellini suggests to him in a nice bit of foreshadowing: “Isn’t it amazing how peaceful Etna is most of the time? Yet, even when a mantle of snow covers its peak, there could be a devastating eruption. Sometimes, there are warning signs.” The ending provides satisfaction, with all the loose ends tied up. But the characterization doesn’t go very deep, consisting mainly of tagging each player with a few interests: Don Pasquale admires callous narcissists; Bellini is proud of his vineyard; Donna Rosa works to protect the environment on Mount Etna; and so on. Exposition can also be clumsy, as when Bellini explains to a Northern Italian that Milan is “Italy’s financial hub, as you must know,” together with tiresomely repetitive questions in the dialogue.
An efficient and intriguing, if sometimes bumpy, crime tale.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.
What should be a rare horror—a woman gone missing—becomes a pattern in Kubica's latest thriller.
One night, a young mother goes for a run. She never comes home. A few weeks later, the body of Meredith, another missing woman, is found with a self-inflicted knife wound; the only clue about the fate of her still-missing 6-year-old daughter, Delilah, is a note that reads, "You’ll never find her. Don’t even try." Eleven years later, a girl escapes from a basement where she’s been held captive and severely abused; she reports that she is Delilah. Kubica alternates between chapters in the present narrated by Delilah’s younger brother, Leo, now 15 and resentful of the hold Delilah’s disappearance and Meredith’s death have had on his father, and chapters from 11 years earlier, narrated by Meredith and her neighbor Kate. Meredith begins receiving texts that threaten to expose her and tear her life apart; she struggles to keep them, and her anxiety, from her family as she goes through the motions of teaching yoga and working as a doula. One client in particular worries her; Meredith fears her husband might be abusing her, and she's also unhappy with the way the woman’s obstetrician treats her. So this novel is both a mystery about what led to Meredith’s death and Delilah’s imprisonment and the story of what Delilah's return might mean to her family and all their well-meaning neighbors. Someone is not who they seem; someone has been keeping secrets for 11 long years. The chapters complement one another like a patchwork quilt, slowly revealing the rotten heart of a murderer amid a number of misdirections. The main problem: As it becomes clear whodunit, there’s no true groundwork laid for us to believe that this person would behave at all the way they do.
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-778-38944-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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