Blood Sisters by Alessandro Perissinotto

review by Maryom

Anna Pavesi is out in the cold and dark digging - not in her garden, but in a wood on the outskirts of Milan, dreading to find what she expects will be there - a hastily buried body.
A little over a week ago, Anna was approached by businesswoman Benedetta Vitali for help with finding the body of her half-sister, Patrizia. The two sisters had barely met but belatedly hearing of Patrizia's death in a road accident, Benedetta feels the body should be interred in the family vault - but it's disappeared! On a friend's mistaken recommendation she contacts Anna Pavesi who is actually a psychologist but agrees to help out - at first mainly for the money but soon becomes intrigued by the puzzling things she discovers....until she begins to feel threatened herself..


Purely by coincidence I read Blood Sisters straight after The Lost by Claire McGowan - another novel in which the central character is a psychologist-turned-sleuth - but whereas The Lost's heroine, Paula Maguire, works alongside the police, Blood Sister's Anna Pavesi is more of a private eye, snooping around on her own with no one to call for back up when things start to get frightening. 
Whereas the previous crime novels I've read from Hersilia have been translations of older novels set in the 1950s-60s, Blood Sisters brings Italian crime up to date. Anna Pavesi is an independent career woman, separated from her cheating husband and trying to make ends meet on her own - not too successfully, which is why she finds Benedetta's offer so tempting. The story swaps between Anna digging furtively, hoping she'll turn up the final piece of the puzzle, and her attempts to take her mind off the danger she's in, by going over the steps that led her to this place. The plot twists and turns, with unexpected discoveries about Patrizia, her life and relationships along the way - and it's always nice to not be able to predict the ending and for once I couldn't! I wouldn't say it was a total surprise but it wasn't what I was expecting.
One thing that really struck me was the setting.  To many of us Italy is a romantic destination for holidays but the landscape of Blood Sisters isn't one of glorious beaches, quaint medieval towns, or dazzling ski slopes but as gloomy as dull as anywhere closer to home - the scruffy industrialised area around Milan in late winter is damp and dreary, constantly wreathed in fog with endless traffic queues. I suppose it just proves that anywhere can be dull and mundane if you live and work there, rather than visit briefly.

Maryom's review - 4 stars

Publisher - Hersilia Press

Genre - crime, adult fiction, 

 Buy Blood Sisters: An Anna Pavesi Investigation from Amazon

Betrayal by Giorgio Scerbanenco

review by Maryom

When Duca Lamberti is approached to perform an unusual operation on a young woman, in return for a huge sum of money and re-instatement on the medical register, he suspects there's something even more underhand going on in the background, especially when his patient is murdered. Working with the Milan police department, he stumbles on an underworld operation involving drugs and arms, but even that doesn't explain the series of deaths plaguing the city, the answer to which lies further in the past.

Duca Lamberti first appeared in A Private Venus as a struck-off doctor who finds his general inquisitiveness coupled with high moral standards leads him into attempting to clean up Milan's underworld. This time he's working in closer collaboration with the police, but it's still that moral high-ground of his that proves to be the leading force. There are times when he's so disgusted with what he uncovers, that he'd like to go away and pretend it doesn't exist  - but finds himself incapable of that. The story was written in the 1960s, in a seemingly more innocent time - it's difficult to imagine anyone today feeling the shock and horror that Lamberti does. Throughout, in Lamberti's mind, the degenerate world of smugglers and pimps is contrasted with the clean, sparkling atmosphere of Milan in early Spring; as in A Private Venus highlighting the difference between appearances and reality.
The plot moves along smartly, with plenty of twists and turns, although the neat tidying up at the end seems like more of an accident than anything else.

Maryom's review - 4 stars

Publisher - Hersilia Press

Genre - crime, adult fiction,  

 Buy A Private Venus from Amazon

In A Heartbeat by Sandrone Dazieri

review by Maryom

Santo Denti is knocked unconscious by his ex-business partner, fellow drug-dealer, Max and wakes him to find himself bizarrely not at home where their argument took place but in the toilets of la Scala opera house just as a performance is about to start. Slowly putting the pieces together he discovers a 14 year gap in his memory, that somehow from being a small time drug-dealer he's become a highly paid advertising executive with a successful international ad agency and that he has an even richer girlfriend, daughter of one of the company directors. This new world isn't all riches and success though; a fellow director has been found murdered - and Santo is top of the suspects list!

The set-up of In A Heartbeat isn't entirely new - there have after all been numerous books and films in which someone is accused of a crime, generally murder, and has no recollection of the period in which the crime supposedly took place. The difference here though is that instead of losing a few hours or maybe a couple of days, the hero has lost 14 years of memory. The world he wakes up in is so very different to the one he remembers - the city he grew up in has changed totally; he's missed the introduction of mobile phones, the growth of the internet and even Terminator3!
As all good thrillers are, In A Heartbeat is a page-turning addictive read - one where I felt very tempted to turn to the last page to check the ending.  Despite the uncovering of the shady side of Milan - both at street  drug-dealer and corporate board room level - the story is told with the quirky humour that I've found in TV's Inspector Montalbano. The only down side was that I didn't find Santo Denti himself to be a very likeable person - this could of course have been deliberate on behalf of the author but even so I'd rather have a lead character I sympathised with.

Maryom's review - 4 stars

Publisher - Hersilia Press

Genre - crime, adult fiction, 
Buy In a Heartbeat from Amazon on pre-order till 13/12/12

A Private Venus by Giorgio Scerbanenco

review by Maryom

Duca Lamberti used to be a doctor, until he was jailed for the mercy killing of a patient. Now, on his release from prison, his previous career is closed to him so he takes a position offered by a wealthy businessman to help cure his son Davide's alcoholism. In trying to find the cause of Davide's excessive drinking, Duca uncovers a sordid tale of prostitution and murder, and takes it upon himself to track down the mastermind behind it and bring him to justice. Along the way he enlists the help of Livia Ussaro, a young woman with a very strange outlook on life  - seeing everything as an experiment.

First published in Italy in 1966 but only now available in an English translation, A Private Venus is the first of a crime series 'starring' Duca Lamberti. In some ways I thought its age was showing - not in the storyline and denouement but in its attitudes towards women and homosexuals. I suspect though that this is more a reflection of attitudes generally at the time rather than of the author's personal viewpoint. It's also a little less violent than maybe today's crime-reader is used to - the worst happening 'off-screen'.

In the introduction Scerbanenco is likened to Georges Simenon but I felt many of the plot elements to have more in common with Raymond Chandler, particularly the aspect of a city hiding crime beneath a veneer of respectability and wealth. The story moves along at a brisk pace as Lamberti peels back the surface layers to uncover the seedier world beneath, building to a nail-biting climax. An excellent discovery of 'classic crime' that I'm rather surprised hasn't been available here before.

Maryom's review - 4 stars

Publisher - Hersilia Press

Genre - crime, adult fiction,  

Buy A Private Venus from Amazon