I Will Have Vengeance
The Winter of Commissario Ricciardi
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4.2 • 17 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Introducing Italy's Commissario Ricciardi. "De Giovanni's distinct brand of noir . . . will appeal to Agatha Christie and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán fans" (Publishers Weekly).
Commissario Ricciardi has visions. He sees the final seconds in the lives of victims of violent deaths. It is both a gift and a curse. It has helped him become one of the most successful homicide detectives on the Naples police front. But the horror of his visions has hollowed him out emotionally. He drinks too much and sleeps too little. Other than his loyal partner, Brigadier Maione, he has no friends.
Naples, March 1931. A bitter wind stalks the city streets, and murder lies at its cold heart. When the world's greatest tenor, Maestro Arnaldo Vezzi, is found brutally murdered in his dressing room at Naples' San Carlo Theatre, the enigmatic and aloof Commissario Ricciardi is called in to investigate.
Arrogant and bad-tempered, Vezzi was adored by millions and hated by hundreds, but with the livelihoods of everyone at the San Carlo opera at stake, who there would have committed such an act? Ricciardi is determined to find out.
Fans of Donna Leon and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán will thrill to this fresh voice in crime fiction. I Will Have Vengeance is the first book in a quartet of masterful crime novels set in fascist Italy.
"A welcome addition to the pantheon of Italian crime fiction . . . Ricciardi is a suitably principled, charismatic yet enigmatic detective." —Euro Crime
"The combination of an unusual detective, historical setting and Italian opera was impossible to resist." —Crimetime.co.uk
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The first English translation of veteran Italian crime writer de Giovanni, this murder mystery set in Fascist 1930s Italy introduces new readers to haughty homicide detective Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi. A loner cursed with a "scar on his soul," Commissario Ricciardi can see in his mind's eye the final moments in the lives of victims "who had died violently," an ability that has propelled him to the top of his profession. Arnaldo Vezzi revered by opera audiences as the world's greatest tenor but reviled by everyone who knew him is fatally stabbed with a large shard of a mirror in his dressing room before a performance of Pagliacci. Ricciardi re-creates the prelude to murder in his mind and hears Vezzi softly rehearsing his lines, which include the Italian words of this book's title. Under pressure from his superior, who is eager to deliver swift justice in such a high-profile case and win Il Duce's praises, the detective pieces together two disparate storylines for a drawn-out but didn't-see-it-coming denouement. Appel deserves credit for retaining de Giovanni's distinct brand of noir in her translation, which will appeal to Agatha Christie and Manuel Vazquez Montalban fans.
