Winter Swallows

by Maurizio de Giovanni, Antony Shugaar (Translator)

Overview

The tenth Commissario Ricciardi Neapolitan mystery is “endlessly surprising… a delicate balancing act between love and pain, horror and beauty.”—ThrillerNord

Christmas has just passed and the city is preparing to celebrate New Year when, on the stage of a variety show, famous actor Michelangelo Gelmi fires a gun at his wife, Fedora Marra.

The shooting itself would be nothing strange: it is repeated every evening as part of their performance. But this time, someone replaced one of the blanks with a real bullet. Gelmi swears his innocence, but few believe him. Approaching old age and with a career in decline, the actor has become increasingly dependent on his wife, much younger than him and at the height of her fame. However, rumor has it that she had fallen in love with another man and was preparing to leave Gelmi. A straightforward case of infidelity and marital jealousy? Commissario Ricciardi has more than one doubt.

A mystery made darker by the sudden fog that envelops an almost gothic Naples, Commissario Riccardi’s latest adventure will enrapture readers until its final, dramatic act.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781609457280
Publisher:	Europa Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/17/2023
Series:	Commissario Ricciardi
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	478,030
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Maurizio de Giovanni’s Commissario Ricciardi books are bestsellers across Europe, having sold well over one million copies. De Giovanni is also the author of the contemporary Neapolitan thriller, The Crocodile (Europa, 2013), and the new contemporary Neapolitan series, The Bastards of Pizzofalcone. He lives in Naples with his family.

Antony Shugaar’s translations for Europa Editions include For Grace Received by Valeria Parrella, Everybody’s Right by Paolo Sorrentino, Fabio Bartolomei’s Alfa Romeo 1300 and Other Miracles, and Margherita Dolce Vita by Stefano Benni.

Editorial Reviews

10/31/2022

Set in 1930s Italy, De Giovanni’s elegant 10th novel featuring Neapolitan Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi (after 2018’s Nameless Serenade) opens with a tantalizing prologue in which an unknown narrator confesses to shooting Ricciardi. Flash back to the period between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, when Ricciardi is called to the Teatro Splendor. During the finale of a popular musical revue, singer and film actor Michelangelo Gelmi shot his beautiful and even more famous wife, Fedora Marra. Gelmi swears that, as with every previous performance, he had loaded the gun with blanks. Fedora’s death is the talk of the city, and Ricciardi is urged to close the case immediately; after all, every member of the audience saw Gelmi fire the fatal shot. Ricciardi isn’t convinced of the actor’s guilt and delves deeper. The chaste romance between Ricciardi and his true love, Enrica Colombo, who has rejected the marriage proposal of “a suave and captivating German officer,” provides welcome counterpoint to the murder investigation—which eventually ties in with Ricciardi’s shooting, which, no surprise, he survives. De Giovanni should win new fans with this one. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Winter Swallows

“Commissario Ricciardi faces murder among a theatrical troupe whose members are just as devious as he is....Even fans of the series are likely to be surprised when the curtain finally falls.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Set in 1930s Italy, De Giovanni’s elegant 10th novel featuring Neapolitan Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi opens with a tantalizing prologue in which an unknown narrator confesses to shooting Ricciardi... The chaste romance between Ricciardi and his true love, Enrica Colombo provides welcome counterpoint to the murder investigation... De Giovanni should win new fans with this one.”—Publishers Weekly

Praise for Maurizio de Giovanni’s Commissario Ricciardi series

“Naples in the early 1930s is the setting for Maurizio de Giovanni’s Nameless Serenade, a series book (translated impressively from the Italian by Antony Shugaar) whose intense opening chapters approach the operatic. [...] These romantic, suspenseful and political strains interweave and resolve in superbly artful fashion.”— Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal

“Love, longing, and loss suffuse [Glass Souls], de Giovanni's elegiac, autumnal eighth Commissario Ricciardi mystery.”—Publishers Weekly

“This is a wonderful series, and I highly recommend it to mystery lovers, as well as historical noir.”—Pulp Den

“Reading a novel by Maurizio de Giovanni is like stepping into a Vittorio De Sica movie.”—The New York Times

“De Giovanni has created one of the most interesting and well-drawn detectives in fiction.”—The Daily Beast

From the Publisher

2022-09-28
Commissario Ricciardi faces murder among a theatrical troupe whose members are just as devious as he is.

No one, least of all himself, disputes the fact that fading theater star Michelangelo Gelmi ended the second evening show of the revue at the Teatro Splendor by shooting his co-star and wife, Fedora Marra. This time, however, the beloved star didn’t rise for her curtain call because someone had substituted live ammunition for the blanks with which Gelmi had shot her repeatedly in the run-up to Christmas 1933. Gelmi swears he never would have killed the love of his life intentionally; Erminia Pacelli, the dresser for the Teatro Splendor, insists that she was stationed outside the door of Gelmi’s dressing room before the performance began and saw no one enter. It’s up to Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi and his sidekick, Brigadier Raffaele Maione, a conscientious detective but a terrible driver, to sort out the case. Readers who know more than they do may be distracted by the problems faced by Livia Vezzi, a widow who’s under pressure to get very, very close to Maj. Manfred von Brauchitsch, a visiting German officer whose advances Enrica Colombo has rejected because she’s in love with Ricciardi, and by Lina Scuotto, a prostitute who’s been beaten nearly to death by someone whose identity nearly everyone her favorite client, medical examiner Dr. Bruno Modo, talks to seems to know but won’t reveal. Ricciardi’s superior, who can’t see why he hasn’t arrested Gelmi, keeps him on a short leash. Fortunately, as Maione reflects, there’s still time to investigate because “nobody’s going to kill anyone between Christmas and New Year’s Day.”

Even fans of the series are likely to be surprised when the curtain finally falls.

Kirkus Reviews