Synopsis: When the clerk arrived to unlock the bookstore on Via Corridoni, the last thing he expected to find inside was a dead Senator.
Now Inspector De Vincenzi has been assigned the case and the only clue is a missing copy of a rare book, La Zaffetta, taken from the room where the Senator lies dead. The Senator's murder is a live hand-grenade with no pin and the Superintendent has given Inspector De Vincenzi eight days to solve the murder . . . or else. As the bodies begin to pile up, supernatural forces seem to be at work. But it was no spirit that put a lead slug in the back of Senator Magni’s head.
Death in a Bookstore, one of De Angelis's best novels, is a psychological tour de force. Inspector De Vincenzi, "the first authentic Italian detective," doesn't just track down clues, he gets inside the heads of his suspects, with often stunning results. “You disregard evidence . . . appearances . . . earlier crimes. You disregard motives. You observe people, question them, examine them, judge them with your psychological method and then set them free, having decided that they cannot be guilty, because they lack the moral, intellectual, temperamental, or emotional capacity to commit a murder, this murder . . . Where will we end up, De Vincenzi? Your obsession with the psychology of murder is madness!”
While new to English readers, Inspector De Vincenzi is immensely popular in Italy, and is the protagonist of several best-selling novels as well as two Italian television series.
Yet another engaging journey into 1930s Milan and a crime involving the discovery of a body in a bookstore. Inspector de Vincenzi slowly pieces together the puzzle and lamented that "... this is one of those knotty cases, in which taking a false step means going back to the beginning ..". But we know that in the end, de Vincenzi will solve this crime.
What I appreciated was the Foreward - this is a must read in itself, for we discover that under Mussolini, the detective novel was not only seized but destroyed, and de Angelis himself was a victim of the fascist dictator.
also by Augusto de Angelis:
> The Mystery of the Three Orchids
> The Hotel of the Three Roses
> The Murdered Banker
further reading:
> Politics and Society in Italian Crime Fiction: An Historical Overview by Barbara Pezzotti> The Importance of Place in Contemporary Italian Crime Fiction: A Bloody Journey by Barbara Pezzotti
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