Flood, The
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A dazzling Italian mystery, rich in intrigue and dark secrets, from an internationally bestselling crime writer at the height of his powers.
Florence, 1986. A seemingly inexplicable attack on a church fresco of Adam and Eve brings together an unlikely couple: Julia Wellbeloved, an English art student, and Pino Fratelli, a semi-retired detective who longs to be back in the field. Their investigation leads them to the secret society that underpins the city: an elite underworld of excess, violence and desire.
Seeped in the culture of Tuscany’s most mysterious city, The Flood takes the reader on a dazzling journey into the darkness in Florence’s past: the night of the great flood in 1966 …
Readers of Donna Leon and Michael Dibdin or Italian authors Andrea Camilleri and Carlo Lucarelli will find this gripping" Library Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Distinctive characters compensate for the at times slow-moving plot of Hewson's atmospheric Italian mystery, set mainly in Florence in 1986. Pino Fratelli, a semiretired carabineer, meets British graduate student Julia Wellbeloved, who's studying the connection between violence and art, at a Florentine chapel, where a fresco of Adam and Eve has been defaced with blood. The culprit is Aldo Pontecorvo, who's involved with a gunrunner for the Red Brigade. Hewson (Carnival for the Dead) doesn't generate much suspense with the crime-solving efforts, even after the decapitation murder of an aristocrat. Nicely rendered chapters set 20 years earlier, during the historical flood of the title provide some colorful, though not strictly necessary, background. The book's greatest strength is the engaging relationship that develops among Pino, Julia, and 22-year-old Luca Cassini, the not-so-bright carabineer assigned to help them. Readers who want to see more of this trio can only hope that their next case will be more intriguing.
