{"id":295606,"date":"2013-11-18T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2013\/11\/18\/blood-curse-and-i-will-have-vengeance\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T15:44:31","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T15:44:31","slug":"blood-curse-and-i-will-have-vengeance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2013\/11\/18\/blood-curse-and-i-will-have-vengeance\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood Curse and I Will Have Vengeance"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are curious similarities in three Italian mystery series, written by Maurizio de Giovanni, Andrea Camilleri, and Donna Leon.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

They\u2019re all police procedurals, and all set in Italy: Naples, Sicily, Venice.<\/p>\n

The three protagonists are Commissarios: Luigi Ricciardi, Salvo Montalbano, and Guido Brunetti. <\/p>\n

They all report to self-serving, social-climbing, ass-covering Questore buffoons: Angelo Garzo, Bonetti-Alderighi, and Patta<\/p>\n

Each has a loyal, efficient, well-connected right-hand Sergente \/ Ispettore \/ Brigadier: Raffaele Maione, Giuseppe Fazio, Lorenzo Vianello.<\/p>\n

And they all have testy, feisty relationships with their forensic pathologists: Doctors Modo, Pasquale, Rizzardi<\/p>\n

But this is where most of those similarities end. <\/p>\n

De Giovanni’s Commissario Ricciardi novels are set in 1931 Fascist Italy whereas the other two series are contemporary. <\/p>\n

Ricciardi has a neighbor, a muse, who he doesn\u2019t meet until the second book in the series. Montalbano has a girlfriend who appears frequently at the beginning of the series but then gets more and more distant as the series progresses. Brunetti has a relatively happy marriage although his boss\u2019 secretary is a bit of distraction.<\/p>\n

Quite a few of Leon\u2019s victims end up floating in canals. Oh, I hate floaters.2<\/a><\/sup> Most of Camilleri\u2019s novels have two incidents or two separate crimes that appear to be unrelated, but come together somewhere along the plotline. And de Giovanni\u2019s Ricciardi has visions, which is the main thing setting this series apart from the others.<\/p>\n

Ricciardi sees the last few seconds of the lives of victims\u2019 violent deaths. Many of them lurk in the shadows and aren\u2019t connected to the investigations. A child who fell from a third-story balcony (Can I go down and play?), a man in a barbershop bleeding from a razor cut to the neck (By God, I didn\u2019t touch your wife! ). Gushing blood—there\u2019s a lot of gushing blood. <\/p>\n

His visions are a blessing and a curse. The upside is that even though the words the victims speak are enigmatic, they aid in resolution of the crimes. The downside is, well, life sucks when you\u2019re sidestepping grotesque images of dead people all day. His solace comes in the evening when he sits in his room, watching his neighbor across the courtyard doing embroidery. <\/p>\n

The tricky, and frustrating, device that de Giovanni uses is mixing up his character\u2019s narratives. Most of the time he identifies who\u2019s speaking or pondering or doing bad things. Other times he doesn\u2019t, which creates red herrings and sends you down dead ends.<\/p>\n

I Will Have Vengeance<\/em> involves the death of an opera tenor, and Blood Curse<\/em>, the death of an elderly fortune-teller and moneylender. Neither perpetrator is obvious or stereotypical. Both books, yes, read them, but in order. <\/p>\n

De Giovanni is a very talented writer. He keeps enough hidden, layers his writing deep enough that the twists and turns come naturally. The books are dark enough to work in Europa\u2019s World Noir series, which thanks to a very aggressive marketing campaign, were on feature tables in most independent bookstores over the summer. <\/p>\n

1<\/sup> Donna Leon has lived in Venice for 25 years, so I\u2019m just going to call her Italian. I\u2019ve lived in Seattle for 25 years and I don\u2019t call myself a Pennsylvanian.<\/p>\n

2<\/sup> A great line and timely line by Coroner Dominic DaVinci in DaVinci\u2019s Inquest.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are curious similarities in three Italian mystery series, written by Maurizio de Giovanni, Andrea Camilleri, and Donna Leon.1 They\u2019re all police procedurals, and all set in Italy: Naples, Sicily, Venice. The three protagonists are Commissarios: Luigi Ricciardi, Salvo Montalbano, and Guido Brunetti. They all report to self-serving, social-climbing, ass-covering Questore buffoons: Angelo Garzo, Bonetti-Alderighi, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[53736,22326,53756,8886,48366,53746,14086,53726],"class_list":["post-295606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-anne-milan-appel","tag-anthony-shugaar","tag-blood-curse","tag-europa-editions","tag-george-carroll","tag-i-will-have-vengeance","tag-italian-literature","tag-maurizio-de-giovanni"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338946,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295606\/revisions\/338946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}