I Will Have Vengeance (Commissario Ricciardi #1)
by Maurizio De Giovanni
Fans of Donna Leon and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán will thrill to this fresh voice in crime fiction. I Will Have Vengeance is the first book in a long series of masterful crime novels set in fascist Italy. Naples, March 1931: a bitter wind stalks the city streets, and murder lies at its chill heart. When the world’s greatest tenor, Maestro Arnaldo Vezzi, is found brutally murdered in his dressing room at Naples’ San Carlo Theatre, the enigmatic and aloof Commissario Ricciardi is called in to investigate. Arrogant and bad-tempered, Vezzi was adored by millions and hated by hundreds, but with the livelihoods of everyone at the San Carlo opera at stake, who there would have committed such an act? Ricciardi is determined to find out. Ricciardi has visions. He sees and hears the final seconds in the lives of victims of violent deaths. It is both a gift and a curse. It has helped him become one of the most acute and successful homicide detectives in the Naples police force. But all that horror and suffering has hollowed him out emotionally. He drinks and doesn’t sleep. Other than his loyal partner Brigadier Maione he has no friends.