Magdalen Nabb writes about a Carabinairi Marshal who reigns over a small neighborhood in Florence. If Commisario Brunetti is an intellectual blueblood in Venice, Marshal Guarnaccio is a middle-class investigator who lives with his family in the Carabinairi station that he oversees.He doesn't give himself too much credit for cleverness. His view of Italy is of the small, unmarked piazzas in Florence where ordinary craftsmen and small business owners live and work. Like Brunetti, a good deal of time is spent navigating the byzantine social structures and relationships that make up life in Italy.Being a relatively new country, Italy is still a strange collection of languages and social customs that hark back to the city-states and nation-states that have existed for centuries. A Caribinairi from Syracuse finds the native Tuscans as inscrutable as the average American finds most native Italians.In this novel, a young and pretty American apprentice is found murdered in the shard pile at a small, country pottery. It is 1987 and the injuries of WW II still linger. Closed to outsiders, it takes a former insider to crack the case by remembering the past.I might have liked this book more if I wasn't so smitten with Commisario Brunetti who as an educated person spends most of his crime-solving time making sociological and psychological observations of his culture. The public library has only five of the 20 Marshal Guarnaccio mysteries so I will content myself with them and see how I feel a few books from now.
Jacket notes: "A young Swiss art student has been reported missing and Marshal Guarnaccia must travel to the small town where she was studying to find out the truth about her disappearance. When her body is found, it appears that she was the victim of a sex-related crime. But Guarnaccia - who comes from a small town himself - suspects that a local feud with roots in the horrors and betrayals of World War II may play an important part in the solution to the crime."Another good, solid mystery featuring Marshal Guarnaccia, who in his slow and plodding way once again manages to understand the emotions and human nature of people in such a way as to help him solve the murder. I read several Italian mystery series, and each author has such a different style. Nabb often leaves me wanting a bit more when it comes to being able to vividly picture the settings of her books. However, her plots are always precise and interesting, and she weaves a story that although you can often guess who-did-it...you're not bored getting there.
Do You like book The Marshal And The Murderer (2003)?
