Marco Vichi "Death and the Olive Grove"

About half way through Death and the Olive Grove I came to the conclusion that I’d better do a bit of digging into what has been termed the Italian Civil War, given the fact that his wartime experiences weigh heavily on Inspector Bordelli’s mind and the aftermath of the War shapes much of the plot in this second Inspector Bordelli investigation.

A subset of World War Two, we’re talking the period between 8 September 1943 and 2 May 1945 as the forces of Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic and the German forces in Italy fought the Italian partisans and the remnants of the Italian Royal Army who remained loyal to King Victor Emmanuel III.

Mussolini had been deposed and arrested on 25 July with the King appointing Pietro Badoglio as Prime Minister and although the new regime initially continued fighting on the Axis side, they surrendered to the Allies on 8 September with King and Cabinet fleeing Rome. Lacking orders and direction, over half a million Italian soldiers were rounded up by the Nazis though most of them (allegedly as many as 95%) refused to swear allegiance to the Italian Social Republic created on 23 September after the Germans occupied most of the Italian peninsula under an operation planned and carried out by Rommel.

That’s where things got really messy, with clashes between pro- and anti-Fascist forces, partisans and Germans and conflict fuelled by rivalries between the various members of the anti-Fascist front.

Having been an active participant in the fighting it’s hardly surprising Bordelli would be inclined to reminisce, and the camaraderie and shared experiences would account for Bordelli ending up Piras, the son of a partisan colleague, ending up as his offsider and probably explains his affinity with petty criminals around Florence. I’m guessing they’re the sort of people who would have been disinclined to support the established authorities who would presumably have leant towards the Mussolini camp in a bid to maintain order and prevent anarchy.

There was still fighting on the front lines between the Germans and the Allied forces who’d landed at Salerno on the Italian peninsula on 9 September and closer to Rome at Anzio (23 January 1944) and after they’d captured Monte Cassino at the end of a campaign that ran from January to May 1944 the Allied forces continued north, reaching the Gothic Line, something that was made possible by the US insistence on diverting troops from Italy to invade southern France rather than wrapping up the German forces in Italy, in August. That would have taken the fighting right through Bordelli’s territory on its way towards Pisa and Bologna before a stalemate through the northern winter.

It’s a side of the War that has been largely ignored as historians focussed on the big picture items elsewhere (notably on both sides of Germany and in the Pacific) but the fact that the war in Europe didn’t finish until May 1945 meant the partisans (and, presumably Bordelli) had something like twenty months of extremely muddled conflict that didn’t actually finish when the War itself ended (see Tobias Jones’ The Dark Heart of Italy on this side of things).

In any case, from where I’m sitting those factors mean it’s natural for Bordelli to be brooding on his wartime experiences, and you’d expect there’d be a fair degree of what we’ve come to know as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in there as well. I’d also point out that much of this would be familiar territory to Italian readers, though that mightn’t be obvious to English, American or Australian readers of Stephen Sartarelli’s translation.

Some twenty years on from the War, in April 1964 (though spring hasn’t quite sprung) a small time thief named Casimiro, who happens to be a dwarf, has been foraging for food in an olive grove where he discovered a man’s body. Casimiro reports his find to his friend Bordelli, who does his best to look after his underworld contacts, but when the pair return to the apparent scene of the crime the body has vanished.

The olive grove is right beside a villa in the Florentine hills, owned by a German aristocrat who’s noticeably absent. While they’re there a large dog attacks them, is shot by Bordelli and they head off figuratively scratching their heads. Bordelli returns to the scene to find the dog has gone as well, Casimiro volunteers to keep his eye on the villa, and Bordelli turns his attention to the death of a seven year old girl found strangled with a strange bite on her belly.

When a second girl is found dead a couple of days later with the same macabre signature it’s obvious we’re looking at a deranged serial killer, and as the victims continue to pile up and Casimiro stays missing, Bordelli and his partner latch onto a suspect and place him under surveillance, which turns out to be an issue when the killings continue with the suspect seemingly sitting on an ironclad alibi.

Along the way they find Casimiro’s body, packed into a suitcase in his flat, and as the investigation continues there isn’t too much in the way of the forensic detecting we’ve come to expect in recent takes on the police procedural.

Actually, Death and the Olive Grove isn’t really a police procedural at all, more a police perambulation as Bordelli goes about his business, musing on his wartime experiences, picking up snippets of information from the numerous underworld figures that make up his circle of acquaintances and reassuring all and sundry that he’s working on the case and expects to come up with a solution soon.

The solution, when it arrives, is triggered by an involvement with a beautiful (and very much younger) associate of Nazi hunter Dr Levi, a sort of colleague from wartime, when they exacted an eye for an eye revenge against Germans who were responsible for atrocities involving Italians (Bordelli) and Jews (Dr Levi). Dr Levi is still on the case, pursuing a particularly nasty war criminal but isn’t interested in delivering him to the Italian criminal justice system.

If you’re looking for action packed tales involving forensic nitpicking, close attention to detail and a lively pace Bordelli probably isn’t for you, and if you’re averse to textual references to what amounts to high-powered chain smoking he’s definitely not for you, but if you’re a fan of Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano Bordelli's cut from much the same cloth with a healthy disrespect for his superiors, an obstinate determination to do things his way and an appetite that takes him into the kitchens of the Florentine restaurants he frequents.

An interesting character in a setting that suits the quirks in his personality, Bordelli might not be everyone’s cup of tea but he’ll do me. The next title in the series is an automatic purchase as far as Hughesy is concerned, and I’ll be watching the horizon for subsequent instalments...

Marco Vichi "Death In Sardinia"

If you don’t believe in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder you might be inclined to suspect Marco Vichi’s Inspector Bordelli is eventually going to run out of wartime recollections to obsess over. On the other hand, when Death in Sardinia opens the war has been over for more than twenty years, and Bordelli’s still getting regular flashbacks, so if he hasn’t run out of them yet it’s not likely to happen any time soon.

Still, to keep a series moving you need new elements, and I can’t help thinking Vichi is setting things up rather nicely for the next couple of years with some of the sideline issues in this story set in Florence and Sardinia in December 1965 when the body of a loan-shark is found in his Florentine apartment with a pair of scissors sticking out of his neck.

At the same time his offsider Piras is recuperating after serious gunshot wounds at home in Sardinia and is faced with the apparent suicide of a family friend, which seems fairly straightforward and obvious until Piras notes there’s no empty cartridge nearby. Suicide victims aren’t in the habit of cleaning up after themselves, therefore someone else must have done it, which leads one to suspect it wasn’t suicide.

Bordelli, as it turns out, has been on the loan shark’s case for a while, and had attempted to obtain a warrant to search his apartment for evidence of blackmail and other illegal activities, and the murder delivers the opportunity senior figures within the Florence legal system hadn’t been willing to grant him. Bordelli had gone as far as visiting his old mate the burglar cum chef in jail, suggesting they might be able to co-operate on a quiet break and enter once Botta’s current spell inside has finished.

The murder rules that out, but delivers Botta into a situation where he can cook a French Christmas dinner for Bordelli and friends.

Now, with the loan shark dead and Bordelli assigned to the case he can search the premises to his heart’s content, musing all the while that if he’d been given the search warrant he originally asked for the victim might still be alive. Bordelli would, as far as he’s concerned, found something that would have sufficed to take Totuccio Badalamenti out of circulation, which would, in turn, have prevented the killer from getting at him.

Badalamenti’s apartment has been ransacked, but it’s obvious that whoever did it wasn’t as thorough as he could have been. Conducting his own rather more thorough search Bordelli finds a bundle of photographs featuring an attractive girl apparently named Marisa (that’s the name written on the back of each of them) in a variety of provocative poses behind a framed picture. He also locates the hidey hole where Badalamenti was wont to conceal the promissory notes that were the basis of his loan sharking. A call to the pathologist later in the day reveals the discovery of a gold ring inscribed with the name Ciro in the dead man's stomach.

Those discoveries provide a couple of leads that need to be tracked down, and since it seems fairly obvious the killer was either one of Badalamenti’s actual clients or someone very close to one of them the clue to the identity would probably lie in the bundle of documents Bordelli has found.

That’s the outcome of an equation something like Dead body + Ransacked flat = (Probably) Something the killer wanted but didn’t find, and on that basis it makes sense to return the promissory notes to the loan shark’s victims. It’ll be a nice Christmas present for them, and will, more than likely, deliver the evidence that unveils the culprit who, according to the infallible and predictably prickly pathologist Diotivede, is left-handed.

Doing that brings Bordelli into contact with a number of characters who could well become significant players in an ongoing series. There’s the Marisa from the photographs, a stunning beauty who might be making come hither noises to the detective who is old enough to know better and manages to resist the temptation for the moment, her brother, a pot-smoking Rolling Stones fan, and the son of a widowed mother who just happens to have inherited a rural property that just happens to strike Bordelli as an ideal place to retire to. Just to strengthen the links to the emerging sex, drugs and rock’n’roll culture, Bordelli’s ex-prostitute friend introduces him to the herb. Interesting.

Equally interesting is the unfolding string of events in Sardinia. Piras, as we are aware, is the son of one of Bordelli's resistance colleagues, and is impatient to get the recuperative process out of the way, ditch the crutches and get back to Florence and his highly attractive Sicilian girlfriend. With time on his hands, he is drawn into the events surrounding the suicide of a neighbour's cousin which, as previously mentioned, he begins to suspect is not suicide at all.

That supposition is based on the absence of the spent cartridge near the body, but regardless of whether it was actually suicide a bloke with time on his hands is going to dig a little bit to see what was happening around the victim in the days leading up to his death. That bit of digging around suggests he was in the middle of selling off his property, but negotiations had reached an impasse.

Fair enough, you might think. Financial issues (or whatever) prompt the bloke to put the property on the market, things break down, bloke can’t carry on and decides to top himself. Yes, a reasonable enough explanation in theory. But who’s the buyer?

Again, someone who has his plate full might leave it at that, but Piras has time on his hands, a motive to dig in the form of deeply distressed relatives who were close to the victim, and keeps on going. Checking out the buyer reveals a man whose background seems to lie in areas where all the official records had been destroyed, which is possible, but uncomfortably coincidental, and when a personal encounter reveals a prickly individual with a spent cartridge caught in the sole of his shoe...

Go much further than that and you’re in spoiler territory, but that’s two of the three strands that run through the novel accounted for. The third, predictably, has a seasonal focus as Bordelli sorts out a Christmas present for Rosa and sets up a Christmas dinner to be cooked by Botta. He hadn’t been released from jail in time to help with the break-in that might have saved Badalamenti’s life but is just in time to look after the seasonal feast. There are, of course, other delicacies mentioned during Bordelli's visits to Toto’s restaurant kitchen and Piras’ recovery is accompanied by his mother’s Sardinian home cooking.

Three books into the series you might be inclined to gripe about the continued recurrence of wartime reminiscences and the repeated appearance of Fascist and Nazi nasties, but with five years to go until he retires that’s going to bring him into the middle of the violent years of the late sixties and early seventies, The Years of Lead with plots, coup attempts, bombings, intrigues, the rise of right- and left-wing paramilitary groups, and street warfare between rival factions.

Given Vichi’s habit of keeping characters from earlier episodes on the edges of the action is subsequent stories, you’d expect the long-haired dope-smoking Stones fans to stick around the periphery and they’re the sort of people who could well end up in some offshoot of the Red Brigades. On that basis you’d have to suspect Vichi has set things up rather nicely for a very interesting ongoing series.

Bordelli's world view, his friendships with ex-criminals, prostitutes and others who have been marginalised by mainstream society make it fairly obvious which side he’ll be leaning towards.

Marco Vichi "Death in August"

While it's always good to get in on the ground floor and start off a crime fiction series right at the beginning, there are certain side issues that emerge alongside the pleasure of making a new and interesting discovery.

In this case, having read and enjoyed Marco Vichi's Death in August those issues include the fact that Vichi's work is translated into English by Stephen Sartarelli, whose regular translation gigs include Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano series.

Sartarelli is, as far as I can gather, a full-time translator, but you can't help thinking more commissions means a slower rate of processing the translations…

While it was Sartarelli's presence in the background that drew my attention to Death in August endorsements from, among others, Andrea Camilleri had a bit to do with the order going in, along with references to Florence and food. It certainly seemed like a promising combination.

It's mid-summer in 1963 and with most Florentines away on holidays there isn't a lot to keep Inspector Bordelli occupied. An elderly wealthy woman isn't answering the phone but the bedroom light is still on, so her daytime companion contacts the police around midnight. The Signora is one of those people who take their own security seriously, so the companion doesn't have a key to let herself in and investigate matters for herself.

The companion's sure Signora Pedretti has been murdered, so while it's the middle of the night Bordelli, suffering from heat and incessant mosquito attacks, heads for the house in the hills above the city, and finds the Signora's body in bed, apparently the victim of a severe asthma attack.

She had, Bordelli learns, a violent allergy to a particular strain of South American pollen, though a double dose of her medication should have been enough to save her.

Things, however, don't quite add up.

While there's apparently untouched asthma medication on the bedside table, and some in the mouth a number of inconsistencies turn up in the autopsy to suggest foul play.

The question is how anyone could have committed murder without a set of keys or access to the house.

It becomes, in other words a how rather than a whodunnit, and while he's pondering how to prove his suspicions in court, with little in the way of official duties to occupy his time, Bordelli becomes the mentor of a Sardinian recruit whose father was Bordelli's comrade in the Resistance during World War Two.

Recollections, reminiscences and flashbacks to wartime action take up a substantial part of the story.

The investigation brings Bordelli into contact with the victim's family - an eccentric brother who's an inventor, and a couple of nephews who would expect to benefit from the will, and are, along with their wives, fairly obvious suspects. They're an unlikeable quartet with what seems to be a set of cast iron alibis, so it seems to be a matter of working on them until someone cracks (which in turn revolves around finding the how, doesn't it?)

When he's not reminiscing about wartime experiences, his childhood sexual awakening and the ins and outs of the matter under investigation, Bordelli's planning a dinner party for the circle of acquaintances that will presumably become regular characters as the rest of the series unfolds.

As with all these series, it's the background cast that provide the basis to keep the reader interested, particularly when there's not a lot happening as far as the investigation is concerned.

Some of them are, more or less, predictable.

Piras, the Sardinian recruit looks like the inevitable off-sider and sounding board, while we also encounter the regulation quirky pathologist. Quirky pathologists seem to be de rigeur for any self-respecting crime series and crusty curmudgeon Diotivede fits the bill to a pathological T.

There would, one suspects, also be an on-going place for the victim's brother around the dinner table which may prove to be one of the centre pieces of the series.

Some of the supporting characters who end up around the table for the drunken dinner that supplies the inspiration Bordelli needs to crack the case are less predictable.

Bordelli has an idiosyncratic attitude to law enforcement and a sympathy towards people who steal to feed themselves that's bound to create on-going issues with his superiors, so it probably comes as no surprise to learn several of his closest acquaintances are petty criminals.

There's an ex-convict with extraordinary culinary skills, a semi-retired petty thief who turns out to be a useful odd job man, and a retired prostitute. As the basis for an on-going series it's a cast that works rather well.

While it only runs to a tad over 200 pages (the volume's padded out with a chunk of the sequel, a fact that obscured the Translator's Notes we've come to expect where Santarelli's involved) Death in August is substantial enough to establish Bordelli as a figure worth following.

He comes across (at least to this reader, as in all cases your mileage may vary) as a likeable, idiosyncratic maverick, not a million miles from Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano in his social and political leanings, with a wartime background that should be a significant element as the rest of the series unfolds and offers all sorts of possibilities.

He's compassionate, conscientious enough to see things through to the end, quite willing to take short cuts where necessary but inclined to keep hammering away until someone cracks where the short cut doesn't exist.

Having stated that it was Stephen Sartarelli's presence as translator that brought me to the series, while the story lacks some of the dialect issues you'd find with Camilleri and Catarella, the translation reads smoothly and there's little to indicate that the story wasn't originally written in English. He's a class act.

The second in the series, Death in the Olive Grove isn't due out in hardback until January next year, and based on the relative slimness of Death in August I'd be inclined to wait for the paperback for $15 from Fishpond, rather than the $22 they're asking for the hardback pre-order.

Still, with the US paperback of Camilleri's The Potter's Field out later this month I'll have something to fill in part of the wait.