A Death In Tuscany - Michele Giuttari

Following on from his first Michele Ferrara novel, A Florentine Death, the lack of imagination shown in the title of A Death in Tuscany doesn't promise any great leap forward from the inadequacy of police-chief-turned-novelist Michele Giuttari's debut novel. There is however a bit more realism in here in the police procedural and in the subject matter, as well as some contemporary relevance to the crime situation in Italy in contrast to the ludicrous serial-killer plotting of A Florentine Death.

It's the death of an unidentified 14 year-old girl, presumably an immigrant, from a drugs overdose that opens up police lines of enquiry into organised crime, drug running and even a cover-up from higher authorities. Chief Superintendent Ferrara's suspicions are aroused, the head of the Squadra Mobile refusing to accept the obvious assumption that the underage girl was a prostitute. When a close friend goes missing however, the Chief switches his attentions to that case, despite it clashing with a murder investigation by the Carabinieri – but could the two cases be linked in some way? Well, evidently...

As a former Florence Police Chief himself, Giuttari's latest novel delivers rather better on the promise of providing an insider's view of the workings and complicated hierarchy within the Italian criminal justice and policing system, and the difficulties of carrying out an investigation when there are ties to powerful bodies such as the Mafia, the Church and the Masons, to say nothing of the delicate matter of police and Carabinieri relations. Even if it does at times feel like a vanity project for the Chief Superintendent to show off his independence, integrity and incorruptibility, it at least tackles an interesting subject through a case that would seem to have a basis in real-world issues.

Unfortunately, Giuttari's writing itself hasn’t improved greatly. It still feels amateurish and awkward, the dialogue is unrealistic and seemingly rather too literally translated, and the characters fail to come to life. The investigation however is strong enough this time for the reader to overlook the weaknesses and implausibilities, making A Death in Tuscany the very definition of brisk, light summer reading.

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