The new crime novel in the increasingly popular mystery series featuring Italian Detective Inspector Bordelli, “a disillusioned anti-hero who is difficult to forget.” (Andrea Camilleri)
Florence, 1965. A man is found murdered, a pair of scissors stuck through his throat. Only one thing is known about him—he was a loan shark, who ruined and blackmailed the vulnerable men and women who would come to him for help.
Inspector Bordelli prepares to launch a murder investigation. But the case will be a tough one for him, arousing mixed emotions: the desire for justice conflicting with a deep hostility for the victim. And he is missing his young police sidekick, Piras, who is convalescing at his parents' home in Sardinia.
But Piras hasn't been recuperating for long before he, too, has a mysterious death to death with . . .
**
From BooklistSometimes Inspector Bordelli of the Florence, Italy, police, circa 1965, can come off as a very one-note character. He’s depressed, he wanders around, he works on solving a murder, and everything is presented with the same overly detailed, melancholic gloss. Even Florence in this series, now in its third installment, is deprived of its glow. The reader will only travel through the dark streets here. The death that Bordelli investigates is that of a pawnbroker stabbed in the throat with a pair of scissors. The killer was looking for something, apparently. The main intrigue in this mystery centers on what that was. Bordelli’s sidekick, young policeman Piras, is recovering from an injury in Sardinia, and encounters murder there, as well. Plodding but interesting in flashbacks. Recommend this one only to those with an insatiable appetite for Italian crime fiction. --Connie Fletcher
Review“Inspector Bordelli has a lot on his mind. He wonders why he’s never found a great woman, he’s got to cut back on cigarettes, and he should probably figure out who killed that wealthy older lady in her 17th-century villa.” (The New York Times)
“Vichi's stellar first in a new mystery series delivers a plausible solution worthy of a golden age crime novel.” (Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW (on Death in August))
“Vichi shows us ever more secret and dark sides to an otherwise sunny city. But his happiest creation, in my opinion, remains the character of Inspector Bordelli.” (Andrea Camilleri)
“Straight from the city that brought us da Vinci and Dante, Vichi is on a par with writers like Henning Mankell and Elizabeth George who have elevated the police procedural to a work of art.” (Shelf Awareness (starred review))