| When a Renaissance masterpiece - Crivelli's' Saint Sebastian'- is stolen from its church in rural Italy, Inspettore Luca Carducci is shocked. However, it is only when the treasure's English curator is discovered electrocuted in his bath in the middle of a field does the chronically underworked Carducci finally put down his Poirot and head out into the land of infinite hills to solve another mystery. Luca's really up against it this time. As the scalding August heat rises tempers fray; the body count grows and the investigation flounders. His Boss piles on the pressure as a possible international incident simmers to the boil and threatens to hand the case over to Luca's arch rival. Added to which, Luca is convinced his wife is having a holiday romance in a Cornish castle.. All this and a missing art treasure; a serial killer on the loose; a mystery dating back to WWII and Luca trying to cope home alone for a week. With all this on one's plate, who would want to be a policeman in this most beautiful corner of Italy? It is the discovery of the curator's body and not the treasure's theft that actually rouses Luca from his air-conditioned balm of iced tea and Agatha Christie as he counts down the days until his summer holidays. The uncovering of the curator's shady sidelines convinces Luca that he was party to the theft and was killed to keep his silence. This theory is born out by the shiftiness of the curator's business partner, Jones, during questioning. The local femme fatale's son, the teenage Conte Tomasso Del Moro, appears implicated though Luca prefers a more exotic, though credible, Chinese Connection. When Jones is found electrocuted the following day, Luca becomes convinced that an international art theft ring are involved and are carrying out 'message killings' and covering their tracks. A flirtatious Anglo-American actress, Martha, provides Luca with more evidence about the young conte whom he continues to dismiss. Compromising photos are taken of Luca and Martha at lunch and are posted on the internet. The silly season UK press pick up the story and threaten an international incident if the murders of the two britons are not solved at once. Luca is invited by some ex-pat friends to an evening to celebrate the Monte San Nicola Trust and learns the legend of an escaped British POW who joined the partisan but disappeared at the end of the war never to be seen again. The man's son, Morris, has come out to finally lay the mystery to rest and threatens vengeance on the prime suspect the illusive, semi-mythical partisan leader- The Badger. Luca refuses to accept Tomasso could be involved in multiple murder and theft even though the growing evidence is pointing that way especially when Luca is attacked at the second crime scene by an unknown but familiar assailant. Luca perseveres with his Chinese hunch and is rewarded with a tip-off from his contact in Macerata's Chinatown, Luigi Wong. The inscrutable chinaman hints at the involvement of the jailbird son of The Badger. Meanwhile, stripped to his pants and vest, Luca's Boss is feeling the heat from his defective air-con and from the big wigs in Rome about the lack of progress. Luca receives the brunt of this rage and is threatened with replacement by the boss's nephew who is to be recalled from a yacht in the Med the very next day. It is the hottest night of the year when Luca's new prime suspect is found electrocuted. Morris is captured nearby and is taken in. His guilt is assumed but his silence is defiant. All seems tied up on the murder front when Luca receives an urgent call from Tomasso's mother requesting a meeting at her hilltop castle at once. She has vital information about the theft of the picture which can only be told to Luca's face. Luca sets off, the case seemingly about to be put to bed. However, Luca's car breaks down at the castle and he is forced to spend the sultriest night of his life in a gothic pile with the most bewitching woman he has ever come across. Fortunately, the weather breaks and passions subside. The contessa reveals that Tomasso had merely borrowed the picture to impress one of the many English girls he has relieved of their virginity that summer. The painting is safe and undamaged. The murders are coincidental. The next morning back at the cells, the enigma that is The Badger has appeared and reveals himself to be one and the same as the missing POW. The Badger discloses that his drunken druggy son was the worst electrician in Italy whose negligence was almost certainly the cause of the accidental electrical deaths. The Badger and Morris are reconciled. When he hears that Boss's nephew has mysteriously failed to reach the mainland in his specially chartered helicopter, Luca feels the sickening creep of his own mother's clandestine,political machinations. But with the cases solved, Luca faces the pressing challenge of freeing his wife from the clutches of a Cornish Casanova elencolavita@hotmail.com 0039 0733 661849 |
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| Saint Sebastian & The Badger A Carducci Mystery by David Sheppard |
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