This is by Gavino Zucca, and I can't remember how I came to it... I'm pretty sure it was suggested on some "what to read in Italian" guide, but I've lost the reference. If I'm correct, it was a really good recommendation, because Zucca's Italian offers a wonderful read. Idiomatic, but not too slangy; lots of action; lots of conversation. His writing represents the complete opposite of the terse, clipped style of Dashiell Hammett, for example, so there's a nice cushion of prose that lets you bounce across the story as though you're on a hovercraft. A complete pleasure, in short.

(The original title, by the way, as represented below, refers to a "giallo". This word literally means yellow, but came to refer to a crime-mystery story, because of the series published by Mondadori, from 1929 onwards, featuring trademark yellow covers.)



Given my vagueness, I'm not sure whether I found Zucca before I realized he was born in Sassari, Sardinia, or whether that locational element was the additional motivation for buying the book.

Published in 2022, it's the seventh in a series featuring the investigations of Lieutenant Georgio Roversi, from the Sassari Carabinieri. The novel is set in 1962. Zucca was born in 1959, so he can't really be drawing on personal memory here, but among other things, it's a great reminder of early sixties' Italian hits...

And it was very satisfying to read something set in places we've only just visited. Not only Sassari, but Alghero (a lot), and Cagliari (a little).


Maybe victim Elena Valente lived somewhere like this... On the first floor of a small, recently constructed building, a little outside Alghero Old Town... Then again, maybe this is too modern, given the time-frame...


Piazza Sulis, in Alghero, on a quiet day in winter

Characters say things like, "Last night I took the ferry from Genoa to Porto Torres..."; or "He's due to disembark tomorrow morning in Golfo Aranci."


Porto Torres


Golfo Aranci

People also talk about taking the ferry from Bonifacio to Santa Teresa di Gallura. Lucky them...

Zucca also mentions things like seadas, and -- more confusingly, because it seems somewhat controversial -- the Sassari Brigade: "Donna Antonietta continually recounts the war memories of her brother who fought on the Austrian front in the Sassari Brigade, knowing full well that Frau Bertha's father was taken prisoner by the soldiers of the Sassari Brigade..."


Bits of the monument (later destroyed) commemorating Italian action at Trincea delle Frasche

And finally, the story... Three murders, which turn out to be linked in ingenious ways. A couple of subplots, involving drug-smuggling and the sale of dodgy alcohol. And a little shot of comedy (which I don't normally like, but did here). One of the suspects dies a little too conveniently, but otherwise, Zucca gave us a nicely intriguing puzzle, and a clear explanation of how Roversi figures out the solution.