AUNTIE POLDI AND THE LOST MADONNA

Poldi proves again that although killing herself may not be the best idea, seaside Sicily is a great place to not do it.

Auntie Poldi’s plan to drink herself to death in sight of the sea having been foiled multiple times by her involvement in a series of juicy murder investigations, her nameless nephew thinks it may be safe to go off to Paris to join Valérie, the object of his sometimes-requited affections. When he returns in a funk because his would-be beloved is now back with her photographer ex-boyfriend, he finds everything topsy-turvy in Poldi’s home in the Via Baronessa. Vito Montana, the virile policeman who occupies Poldi’s ever lustful thoughts, is nowhere to be found. Instead, a sitar player named Ravi wanders the hallways mixing cleansing smoothies, and Poldi herself seems caught on the great wheel of karma. A tape surfaces that shows an Italian woman with Poldi’s voice cursing in Bavarian at the priests who are trying to exorcise her demons. Then a young nun who’d attended the exorcism falls from a roof in the Vatican. When she sneaks into the Vatican to figure out what’s happening, she manages to knock over a group of cardinals and get herself arrested. Her best friends back home in Torre Archirafi abandon her. The search for a missing statue of the Black Madonna beckons, but an authority even more powerful than the pope puts sex, drink, and sleuthing out of her reach. Poldi rebels as only Poldi can, and the results spiral to epic and profound heights only a manic genius could have imagined.

When a heroine so fearless spars with karma, who can doubt the result?