Prep yourself for France and Italy – with guidance from quirky detectives
Forget about airport crowds, museums that force you to book fourteen months in advance and harried waiters in overpriced restaurants. Instead, relax in your favorite chair at home and follow the trails of detectives in regions all over France and Italy. They will take you to their favorite eateries, bars and other hangouts, often places seldom visited by tourists. Learn what the locals are interested in, read what they think and feel and how they spend their days and money.
“The intensity of light and color in Brittany had beguiled even the greatest of its fans: Monet, Gauguin and Picasso had fallen under Brittany’s spell.” That is author Jean-Luc Bannalec’s declaration of love for Brittany in northwestern France. His Commissaire Georges Dupin, who was recently transferred there from Paris, takes us through Brittany with the inquisitive eyes of a newcomer. Each of his books is about more than just murder. In The Missing Corpse, Bannalec vividly describes the activities on the Belon River, that bring the famous Belon oysters to the gourmet’s table. His Fleur de Sel Murders describes salt farmers who believe that the scent of violets emitted during the harvest of Brittany’s celebrated salt causes hallucinations. Death in Pont Aven has Commissaire Dupin investigating the murder of a hotel owner in the town in which the painter Gauguin once lived. To date, eleven of Bannalec’s books have been translated into English and more are in the works.
A mere one-and-half hour train ride whisks tourists from Rennes, Brittanny’s capital, to Paris, where Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg conducts his investigations with extremely unorthodox methods. To date, he appears in eight novels available in English. Adamsberg is the creation of female author Fred Vargas, who is also a French historian. She writes mysteries as a sideline “just to relax.” Vargas sends his commissaire on her murder trails not only in Paris, but also to Iceland, London and the French Alps. In Seeking Whom He May Devour, the Alps story, a werewolf terrorizes the locals.
In the south of France, in Provence, Capitaine Roger Blanc, the creation of Cay Rademacher, chases villains. In Murderous Mistral (the icy wind that blows through the Rhone Valley) Blanc, another displaced Parisian, attempts to solve a complicated case. And in Deadly Camargue he is called to the southern part of the Provence, to investigate the suspicious death of a well-known political journalist The case confronts him with a spectacular art theft which took place decades earlier. Only two of Rademacher’s books are available in English.
Toronto-born Mary Lou Longworth lives in Aix-en-Provence. All ten of her published mysteries take place in the surrounding rolling hills of this city. Her acclaim has resulted in a TV series called Murder in Provence, which is available from Britbox and Amazon Prime. Two outstanding novels are Death at the Chateau Bremont and The Mystery of the Lost Cezanne. Chief Magistrate Antoine Verlaine and his partner Marine Bonnet search for answers as to who stole the painting. To what lengths will they go to get it back?
Unsurprisingly, in Italy, Venice is the focus of two foreign-born crime writers. Author Donna Leon, an American, has a string of novels that feature Commissario Brunetti, an investigator who scouts the murky corners of the city. Leon’s descriptions include the many darknesses of the Serenissima, not least the embedded tradition of political corruption. She has published sixteen novels in which Brunetti does his thing.
Philipp Gwynn Jones, born in South Wales, has lived in Venice for more than a quarter of a century. His Nathan Sutherland series is, as one reader described it, a civilized, knowledgeable, charming antidote to the darker reaches of the genre, full of entertaining descriptions of the city. Eight books are out so far. One of the best is The Venetian Legacy. In this Nathan and his new wife become subject of the attention of the Venetian Mafia’s attention.
Moving to Tuscany, we come to Murder in Pitigliano. Camilla Trinchieri weaves many recipes and meals into her murder stories. Her hero, Nico Doyle, is a retired New York police detective. He makes his home in the imaginary town of Gravigna, where his dead wife’s relatives live with a little dog, and where he becomes a part-time chef in their restaurant. In Murder in Chianti, Nico discovers a dead body in the woods and the local police recruit him to help find the murderer. The victim was well known to the locals and Nico must dive deep into Gravigna’s painful past to get to the truth. Camilla Trinchieri has published four books, and more are to come.
Michael Dibdin, one of my favorite mystery writers, is the creator of Italian police inspector Aurelio Zen. Ratking, Dibdin’s first novel, won the Gold Dagger award of 1988. In Cosi Fan Tutti, Zen is transferred from Rome to Naples, where he becomes embroiled in a romantic intrigue involving love-sick gangsters and prostitutes who pass themselves off as Albanian refugees. In this novel Naples seems to resemble the setting of Mozart’s opera of the same title. Dibdin has written eleven Aurelio Zen books. There will be no more – he died in 2007.
In following the trail of novelist Gianrico Carofiglio’s attorney-detective Guido Guerrieri, the town of Bari in the Puglia region of Italy comes to life. The rows of sausages and heaps of octopuses lying in push carts smell strongly, and vegetables and fruits call out for buyers. The sea breeze leaves the taste of salt on your lips and the locals speak a dialect wide removed from standard Italian. Before launching a second career as an author, Carofiglio was a public prosecutor specializing in organized crime. He was also a member of the Italian senate. His first novel, Involuntary Witness, was published in 2002. In it, a boy is found dead in a well near a beach resort. A Senegalese peddler is accused of the crime in a case soaked in racism. Carofiglio has six books that are available in English.
Andrea Camilleri is the author of the wildly successful Montalbano mystery series. By my count he has published 28 novels and two collections of short stories that feature this police inspector who lives and works in a fictional town in Sicily. Many of these captivating tales are available in English in the Montalbano TV series. The astonishingly prolific Camilleri has also written non-fiction, mostly about events in 19th century Sicily. One such book, set after WWI, is The Sacco Gang. This is a true story of the Sacco brothers, who defied the Mafia and the fascist government with tragic consequences. It is an account of the crimes and treachery that plagued the lives of peasants around Palermo. This past June, my husband and I had intended to travel to Italy. However, because discouraged by news of flight cancelations, unruly passengers and overbooked hotels we dropped the idea. Instead, I went off to the library, took out six of the above-mentioned books and began to read. I am still at it. …
