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Some Bitter Taste is the latest in Magdalen Nabbšs series of novels taking place in Florence, Italy, and featuring Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia. This one is like a jigsaw puzzle, many colorful pieces scattered over the board and not coming together until the end. It concerns Jewish refugees from World War II and Albanian refugees from the current situation in Kosovo. There is an older woman afraid that someone has been getting into her apartment and intends to do her harm, and there is an ill Englishman surrounded by works of art in a luxurious villa with a high view over Florence. There is also an Albanian prostitution ring causing the tender-hearted marshal many misgivings as he tries to help some of the young women trapped in it. One of the young women is enabled to break away from her pimp, and Guarnaccia counsels her to marry a suitor and settle down to quiet life. Another young woman in the clutches of the ring tries to break away, but is taking on a wild car ride and thrown out in the road as the police unsuccessfully chase it. The woman, badly injured, somehow survives being hit by another car, but the marshal holds himself responsible for her reduction to the mentality of a 5-year-old. Guarnaccia, a high-ranking non-commissioned officer, holds himself responsible for other tragedies, too. The older woman who complained to him that there had been unknown men in her apartment dies, and he regrets that he had not paid more attention to her needs. Hešs not certain it was murder, but knows that foul play had to be at the bottom of it. His main suspect is an antique dealer, Rinaldi, whose apartment is in the same building as the dead woman. His case with the wealthy Englishman begins with a minor robbery at the latteršs villa, and as Guarnaccia comes to investigate, the expatriate enjoys talking to him for its own sake and wants the marshal to come back for more conversation. The Englishman dies under questionable circumstances, and again Guarnaccia feels at fault for not having called at the villa when he could have. Photographs belonging to the older woman lead Guarnaccia to a lawyer, who philosophizes in an interesting way while helping to clear up much of the background to the case, especially as concerns Jewish refugees in wartime Italy. There is a thread to the present in the person of a deceased art dealer named Jacob Roth, and it is to the past that Guarnaccia must go to learn all the ramifications. Guarnacciašs immediate superior, Captain Maestrangelo and the public prosecutor seem to have more confidence in him than he has himself. His usual self doubts are magnified in this case, and he starts looking at himself as a failure. This of course is the darkness before the dawn because a new event leads to the unraveling of knot after knot in his investigations, although the solutions are not as satisfying as he could have wished. The author again shows us the charms and the pitfalls of living in modern Florence, but there is a pronounced moodiness in this story that I didnšt catch in earlier novels by Nabb. Shešs giving us the real world here, and sometimes the real world is not a happy place. The story is well plotted and well told, and the reader wants to race to the true-to-life ending. The fascination of the story is in the character of Marshal Guarnaccia himself. As the unreformed prostitute says in the end, he did his best. And his best also makes for a compelling story.
Reviewed by Eugene Aubrey Stratton, November 2002
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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