Just barely surviving the dog days of summer, Inspector Bordelli is roused from his heat-induced torpor by an assassination devious enough to make a Borgia blush and leave Poirot puzzled. When the caretaker of a wealthy recluse finds her elderly mistress dead in her bed, Bordelli and his fresh-faced new protégé set out to prove it's a case of murder disguised as accidental death.
Set in Florence during the summer of 1963, Death in August is the first novel in a new mystery series by veteran Italian author Marco Vichi. A World War II veteran, Inspector Bordelli is weary, aging poorly and alone, still haunted by his years of wartime service. Yet he is saved from the doldrums of melancholia by his humor and heart--traits that draw to him an odd but loyal cadre of petty thieves, happy hookers and general misfits. (Not to mention his dinner parties make the Marriage at Cana look like a church potluck.)
Vichi's prose transports readers to the deserted, sweltering streets of down-and-out Florence, thanks to a translation by Stephen Saltarelli that conveys the dialogue with a lyricism and tongue-in-cheek wit one instinctively senses were present in the original. 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. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher