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DEATH AND THE OLIVE GROVE
by Marco Vichi and Stephen Sartarelli, trans.
Hodder & Stoughton, January 2012
256 pages
17.99 GBP
ISBN: 1444712233


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A body disappears from an olive grove. Later a little girl is found murdered with a human bite mark on her stomach. Inspector Bordelli and his side-kick Piras are assigned the case. The fact that Bordelli has no idea how to solve the case feeds the suspicion that this inspector is not top-notch. As the book unfolds it develops the picture of this lonely man, stuck in the past and living in a depressing world of cigarettes and criminals. The character has depth, although only through interaction with his past, not through his intelligence. It is interesting idea to see a crime novel with such an anti-hero as its main character. His side-kick is even more superficial and quite banal in places. This apparent lack of depth might owe something to what seems in places to be a somewhat too literal translation, evidenced amongst other details by the repeated use of the word 'pleasure' as a greeting.

Despite all this the story is certainly worth reading, and does sustain its interest. Several layers of plot are intertwined, the outcomes all quite predictable but not inevitable. There is not a great deal of dialogue. Instead the characters are developed through the descriptive prose, such as the descriptions of the inspector's car, the old apartments, the dark stairwells of the Florence buildings, the rain, the thunder. Even the food confirms the dark mood, located as it is in the back of a restaurant kitchen with a cook full of macabre stories.

Although this novel was first published in Italy in 2003, it creates an atmosphere redolent of the 1950s. Those who liked the depressing black and white world of BRIGHTON ROCK should feel at home with this. Where is the wonderful Italian scenery, the sun, the architecture, the culture, the design? But maybe that is actually the stereotype, and it's possible that the gritty place conjured up in this novel is the more realistic experience of the Italian detective.

§ Sylvia Maughan is a retired university lecturer, based in Bristol.

Reviewed by Sylvia Maughan, March 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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