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
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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