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When the body of a woman laid out in a chapel of rest is found oddly disfigured, Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara is called in. Under the dead woman's feet is found some burnt tobacco from a type of cigar that Ferrara smokes. An anonymous note is delivered to Ferrara's door, threatening him and his wife. A few days later, a woman is found murdered, naked and posed with a black rose between her legs. Other deaths with a Satanic connection follow swiftly. While Ferrara and his staff desperately try to discover the culprit or culprits, Ferrara himself is also concerned about the threat to his family, and the all-too-likely chance that his bosses will use any mistake as an excuse to send Ferrara away from his beloved Florence. Ferrara has appeared in four previous books and will be familiar to some readers, as will those particular features which mark out Giuttari's detective stories: the setting amongst historic Florentine landmarks, the touches of domesticity with an authentic Italian flavour, and the workings of the Italian criminal justice system. Ferrara's battles with the powerful, and his need to make progress to fend off their backstage machinations have also been detailed before. The number of previous outings may be why THE BLACK ROSE OF FLORENCE sounds a little melodramatic at times, with hackneyed attempts to build up the tension by the deliberate foreshadowing that ends several chapters. The plot in THE BLACK ROSE involves a group within the Freemasons who indulge in Satanic rites involving young attractive women and rich powerful men. The men are represented as being on the top rungs of society with an international reach, and include the dastardly scheming of Sir George Holley and his confederates in England, taking time out from pulling the strings of international finance to compound the problems of Ferrara in Florence. This idea of an éminence grise has a long history and will appeal to those who find conspiracy theories convincing. It also provides a worthy enemy for the protagonist, who may be called upon to frustrate their knavish tricks in future outings. As police crime novels go, Giuttari does provide something different from the usual, and is likely to remain popular providing the plots are believable. The procedures and thoughts of the police officers are interesting and give the characters substance, and the dialogue is crisp. He brings out well the interesting features of Italian crime-fighting with two separate agencies, the police and the carabinieri, working under the direction of a third, the prosecutor. Above all, like Paris in the Maigret stories, or the late nineteenth-century London of Sherlock Holmes, the special character of Florence and Tuscany is soaked into the pages and for the many who love the area, this will have a special appeal. § Chris Roberts is a retired manager of shopping centres in Hong Kong, and now lives in Bristol, primarily reading.
Reviewed by Chris Roberts, June 2012
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