The Marshal and the Madwoman

Rating:
Summary: Marshal Guarnaccia and other people's little problems
Review: The best time to murder someone in Italy is during its brief but sweltering summer, when all the sensible people have left for the coast. Those who are left, like Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia of the Florence Carabinieri, keep to the margins of life - the shady side of the street and the edges of the day.

It would be easy to dismiss the suicide of a neighborhood "crazy" as just another sad chapter in the life of the urban poor. But Crazy Clementina lives in a close-knit traditional Italian community, which makes sure that the unfortunate neighbor has a daily bowl of soup with bread or enough gas to feed her little stove.

The Marshal and the Madwoman was first published in Britain by Penguin Books in 1988. It's one in a series about the phlegmatic Sicilian investigator, who (to his supervisor's constant irritation) tends to get involved in "other people's little problems". This is a re-issue by Soho Press.

I've read a number of the books in the Soho Crime series and there hasn't been a dud amongst them. The writers are all first-flight: van de Wetering, Lovesey, Qiu, Matsumoto and so on. I can recommend them all.