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The more I read by Magdalen Nabb, the more addicted I become to her mystery novels. These feature Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia of the Florence, Italy, Carabinieri. The Carabinieri is an armed police force throughout Italy, and the rank of "marshal" is that of a senior sergeant. Too low in rank to take charge of important cases himself, Guarnaccia, originally from Sicily, is quite content to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for some senior officer. Property of Blood deals with the business of kidnapping, quite an organized business in a number of countries. In Italy, we learn, there is even a National Association of Kidnap Victims. The business employs people with job titles, such as Planner, Feeder, etc. There are strict rules relating to the handling of the victim, many designed to keep the kidnapped person from seeing anyone, hearing the voices of anyone, or being able to gain any other information that might help identify the kidnappers later. There is the assumption that the victim will get out of it alive, provided, and that's a powerfully important proviso, the victim's relatives obey the kidnappers' demands and pay up every bit of the ransom demanded of them. But getting out alive, and being comfortably treated, are two entirely different things, and the victim's lot is a pitiful and painful one. Countess Olivia Brunamonti, an American who married a now deceased Italian Count, is the victim in this story. The Brunamonti family fortune is not large, but Olivia has built up a fashion design business that is highly successful. She has two young adult children, Leonardo and Caterina, and she is romantically linked with Patrick, an American lawyer who handles some of her business matters. As soon as her kidnapping is discovered, there arise two interested camps in freeing her, her family and the authorities, but their aims are not identical because the police are interested in the crime as well as the victim, while the family is more concerned with the victim only. At first the police and the family work together, but soon the family becomes most secretive. Marshal Guarnaccia works on the case under the direction of Captain Maestrangelo and Prosecutor Fusarri, both of whom seem to appreciate his abilities. In the beginning Guarnaccia is assigned to develop good relations with the family, but once the family hires and follows the advice of a private detective, he loses his access to the family's confidence. Then he works closely with another Marshal, who is in charge of a carabinieri post in the hill country. His efforts here are more promising. Guarnaccia is a modest, unassuming man who sometimes wonders why he is given assignments that could seem above his rank, but he has excellent intuitive thinking, and he covers his assignments well. His character is well drawn and developed throughout the story. We see him with his wife and two children, but, mercifully for the reader, his personal problems are very small and not of a type to detract us from following the main thread of the story. Characterization is a strong point with Nabb. Especially interesting in this book is the way she presents the kidnap victim, Countess Olivia. Our hearts really go out for the countess, both during her ordeal and after she is rescued. One of her kidnappers flaunts her with an old Florentine saying, "The trouble with having children is you don't know what sort of people you're letting into the house." Not that the children have anything to do with the kidnappers, but they are many faceted, and we see them differently from different angles, Leonardo tending to be more feckless and the younger Caterina being the strong-willed one The beautiful city of Florence, too, is featured in the Guarnaccia stories, although somewhat less in this one than in others. That's probably because much of the action regarding the kidnapping takes place in the rough hill country above Florence. The reader gets a different view of the Tuscan hills in the story than I did, for example, when I drove across them once as a tourist. Nabb paints beautiful word pictures as she weaves in and out amid the kidnappers' camp in the hills and the police and family surroundings in the city, and she brings the story to a memorable ending. Storywise, I would suggest only that, inasmuch as the carabiniere is not overly familiar to American readers, perhaps a short appendix could help us see this organization better. There are now better than ten Marshal Guarnaccia novels, giving readers something to sink their teeth into. In addition, although not Florence per se, Iain Pears's art theft mystery novels set in Rome and elsewhere sometimes touch upon Florence and in any case help further the background understanding of the reader who likes the Italian touch. I would also recommend Summer's Lease, by Rumpole creator John Mortimer, which is in fact a delightfully written murder mystery set in the hills of Tuscany as another excellent backgrounder.
Reviewed by Eugene Aubrey Stratton, October 2002
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