Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions

First of a proposed series by Mario Giordano, son of Italian immigrants and raised in Munich; this is the first of his novels to be translated into English--by John Brownjohn from German. The story features Auntie Poldi (Isolde Oberreiter) but is told in the voice of her nephew, a struggling writer. Poldi's father, a German detective inspector in Munich, has left her with a craving for "the hunt." When she retires to Sicily at age 60, to be near her deceased husband's sisters, she expects a quiet life of wine, nosy relatives, and good food. Instead she finds a mystery when her handsome young handyman, Valentino, is murdered. She cannot seem to sit still and wait for the police investigation, headed by the handsome Commisario Vito Montana, to find the culprit, so she does her own sleuthing and nearly gets killed in the process. This is a light and entertaining book, rather like an Italian cosy. You do get a loving description of Sicily along with several colorful characters. Kirkus offers a highly favorable review as does Publishers Weekly.

Italian mysteries

I discovered a new mystery series by Italian author Andrea Camilleri recently when I read The Patience of the Spider. I love to read mysteries where I also get to learn something about another country, culture or time period. Inspector Montalbano is apparently an aging and rather eccentric but clever member of the constabulary in Sicily who is recovering from recently being shot. In fact he was traumatized psychologically as well as physically and now wakes up in the dark hours of the morning at precisely the same time that he was shot. But occasionally he does his best thinking then. He's trying to solve a puzzling kidnapping...the perpetrators have taken a young woman whose immediate family is virtually penniless. Then it turns out that her uncle is rich and he is the real target of the ransom demands and of a campaign to destroy his reputation and his potential candidacy for political office. The side stories about Inspector Montalbano's tempestuous love life, his love of good food, and the Sicilian countryside all make this an enjoyable if somewhat lightweight read. I love Italian food, too.

I've read some other good mysteries set in Italy that I would recommend. The early works by Iain Pears (e.g., The Raphael Affair, The Titian Committee), before he got into writing more substantial historical mysteries (An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Dream of Scipio), center around a couple of art theft investigators (Flavia di Stefano of the Italian National Art Theft Squad, and consulting British art historian Jonathan Argyll) operating out of Rome. Because Pears is in fact trained as an art historian, these are also chock full of factual information as well as local color.