River of Shadows: A Commissario Soneri Mystery

Description

Rain falls relentlessly on the Po valley in northern Italy, and the river is swollen to its limits. A huge barge leaves its moorings, steering an erratic course downstream and away into the foggy night. When finally it runs aground hours later, the bargeman is nowhere to be found. That same evening, Commissario Soneri is summoned to investigate the apparent suicide of a man in nearby Parma. He and the bargeman were brothers, and when the detective discovers that they served together in the fascist militia fifty years earlier, the incidents seem likely to be linked. Resentments dating from the savage civil strife between Fascists and Partisans in the closing years of the war still weigh heavily, and as the flood waters begin to ebb, the river yields up its secrets: tales of past brutality, bitter rivalry and revenge. Valerio Varesi is a penetrating analyst of his country's dark and undigested history.

Valerio Varesi has been the Parma correspondent for La Stampa and La Repubblica. River of Shadows is the first of a series of thrillers featuring Commissario Soneri, now the central figure of one of Italy's most popular television dramas. Joseph Farrell has translated several major Italian authors, including Dario Fo.

'The real coups of River of Shadows are twofold: the author's trenchant analysis of his country's ignoble past, married to the narrative acumen of a master storyteller' Barry Forshaw, Independent. * Independent *