Fictional Italian detectives

It seems that I have a soft spot for detective stories set in Italy. Apart from the Commissario Brunetti¹ stories (written by Donna Leon) set in Venice², I have also read and enjoyed four books written by Tom Benjamin, featuring private detective Daniel Leicester and set in Bologna. Recently I've come across another series, this time featuring retired DCI Daniel Armstrong and set in various locations in northern Italy such as Tuscany, Firenze and Portofino; these are written by T. A. Williams.

I find these books charming, and possibly useful as tourist guides. I doubt very much that I will return to Venice, for otherwise I could check out some of the Brunetti locations. Similarly, I won't be returning to Firenze³, but I do have my eye on a trip to Liguria, probably staying in Santa Margherita Liguria and visiting Portofino.

Whilst I also find the Armand Gamache⁴ books interesting (though not as tourist guides), they slightly annoy me in that they are basically part of the 'closed circle of suspects' (or 'drawing room murders') genre. So are the Armstrong books. I have to admit that I don't like this genre very much; whilst it allows the author to concentrate on characterisation, it doesn't allow for open ended investigations that are the norm for real-life police murder cases.

It seems that author T. A. Williams is churning these books out, as 'In Tuscany' was published in 2022 and 'In Verona' (the ninth book; Portofino is eighth) was published at the end of 2024. That said, they make for interesting reading, and unusually for modern books there is no sex (it might be implied, but not written about) and no bad language. And they are much better than 'The spy in the shadows'⁵.

The Italian books take great pains in showing all the wonderful meals that are served, so I often wonder how a Italian Jew who keeps kosher (no meat and milk) and has hyperaldosteronism (no tomatoes, especially) would eat. I love the fresh fish but not the frutti di mare (not kosher).

One question that has always been in my mind from the Brunetti books: what does Dottore mean? The answer comes from T. A. Williams: they addressed him as ‘Dottore’, the usual appellation for an Italian with a university degree or in a position of responsibility. So I can be called Dottore when in Italy.

One peeve that I have with the Brunetti books is that time seems to stand still: the children are still the same age, or maybe are one year old in the later books than they were in the earlier books. One policeman gets promoted, the police pilot is replaced and the Senegalese waiter in the police's local bar takes over the bar, but otherwise everything else is the same. This does not happen in the other books that feature a normal continuing back story.

One final niggle before I close this blog: in 'Murder in Chianti' (the second Dan Armstrong book), his daughter says prior to visiting Firenze that "We can get a train direct from Pisa airport and be there in little more than an hour."  When we went to Firenze, we flew to Firenze airport, not to Pisa. It seems strange to me that they would fly to Pisa unless this was a direct flight from Birmingham where the daughter lives.

Internal links
[1] 1114
[2] 855
[3] 848
[4] 1868
[5] 1888

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
443	14/01/2012	More City Boy	City Boy
534	14/01/2013	Election day duty driver	Kibbutz, Probability
669	14/01/2014	Commuting	Personal
915	14/01/2016	MP3 Headphones	Richard Thompson, MP3
916	14/01/2016	Alan Rickman, RIP	Films, Obituary
1574	14/01/2023	Inside and outside the lemon tree	Personal
1708	14/01/2024	Band practice	Musical group
1709	14/01/2024	CPAP problems	CPAP

The spy in the shadows

A phone call in the middle of the night cuts through the quiet, unsuspecting European streets. At one end of the line – a veteran Mossad Agent on an undercover assignment as a diplomat in Paris. At the other end – the Mossad’s deputy director, with the only news the Agent was not prepared to receive: “The daughter of the head of the Mossad is on a class trip to Poland. Last night, she went missing.”

So reads the blurb for the "gripping espionage novel" (not my words) by Orna Sandler Klein, who worked for the Mossad. As one review puts it, This is an excellent book that describes in vivid detail the nature of complex Mossad operations in foreign countries. As opposed to most books on Mossad, it is not filled with James Bondian acts of derring-do and violence but rather reveals the complex planning of operations, the tradecraft involved, and the toll that the intelligence profession exacts on its practitioners. Its portrayal rings with the accuracy that comes from the author's years in the Mossad.

So how could I resist reading this book? Unfortunately, my experience of reading did not really match the 5 star reviews posted at Amazon. For starters, the daughter of the head of the Mossad only goes missing half way through the book; until then, we are treated to reading about the peripatetic lifestyle of the nameless narrator, a woman living in Paris with her young family. One day she travels to Brussels, another day to Amsterdam, a third day to Rome ... all the time liaising with the agents that she supports.

Apparently I have a different standard for a good spy book. I come from the 'stale beer' school of John Le Carré and know how complex planning reads; I didn't see too much evidence of that here. Apart from anything else, the writing itself was confusing: plenty of paragraphs begin with "He" or "She", but it's not clear at first who these people are. It wouldn't have hurt to use the characters' names when switching point of view.

I agree that this book describes 'the toll that the intelligence profession exacts on its practitioners', but this could have been included in a more interesting story. 

There is a hint of the pagers affair, where one character is described as a businessman hoping to sell computers to some enemy organisation; now that's planning. But the rest - including the operation to save No'a, the missing/abducted girl - just happens, one day at a time. In other words, the planning here is tactical, not strategic.

This would appear to be Sandler Klein's only available book, so I can't compare it to any of her other works. I can't recommend this book to anybody and I doubt whether I'll even bother to read it again.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
325	13/01/2011	Mirror mirror on the wall	Personal
442	13/01/2012	Caught in a musical timeweb	10cc, City Boy
533	13/01/2013	Embedding pictures in HTML emails	Programming, Delphi, Email
798	13/01/2015	Split questionnaire design	DBA
914	13/01/2016	Reviving the research	DBA
1461	13/01/2022	Desiccated apple slices	Cooking, Ninja grill
1573	13/01/2023	Israeli democracy nightmares	Israel
1707	13/01/2024	Bish-a-lu-la 2	Cooking, Kibbutz, Slow cooker