SOME BITTER TASTE

Introspective Marshall Salvatore Guarnaccia (Property of Blood, 2001, etc.) is a thoughtful, decent policeman who meant to follow up on Signora Sara Hirsch’s complaint that an intruder had been in her apartment. But by the time he’s dealt with the brutalized, underage Albanian prostitute illegally smuggled into Florence and the minor robbery at the Villa L’Uliveto, the home of stroke-impaired Sir Christopher Wrothesly, the signora has been murdered. His belated queries indicate that the nearly insolvent signora had been expecting a windfall: the return of a Monet, once wrested from her Jewish forebears during the war, now supposedly in the keeping of a half-brother no one had ever seen, and the neighbors were half-convinced didn’t really exist. Before he can track down the provenance of the painting, Guarnaccia is called once again to the Villa, where Sir Christopher has died, more valuables have gone missing, and his secretary, Jeremy Porteous, is fingering a staffer, an illegal Albanian immigrant, as the thief and killer. Seeking to untangle who was murdered, who was not, and who owns which treasures, Guarnaccia winds up immersed in the complicated life of the signora’s deceased grandfather, Jacob Roth, which places her and the urbane, wealthy Sir Christopher under the same family tree whose branches have been systematically denuded by an antiques dealer with unscrupulous ties to both.

Heir to Simenon’s spare, lean prose, Nabb surpasses her stylistic mentor with a stunning, intricately plotted tale of contemporary malfeasance, wartime accommodations, and long-held Italian prejudices.