The Girl From Venice

August 29, 2016
In this refreshing departure from Smith’s popular international thrillers, the 15th novel from this two-time Hammett Award–winner (Gorky Park) is a clever, well-crafted, and exciting blend of WWII romance, suspense, and intrigue. Set in Nazi-occupied Venice, Italy, in 1945, just weeks before Germany’s surrender to the Allies, Cenzo the fisherman finds a young woman floating in the lagoon. He rescues her and kills a German officer to protect her. Eighteen-year-old Giulia is the sole surviving daughter of a wealthy Jewish family, now sought by the Germans, Fascists, and partisans because she can identify the traitor who betrayed her family. Cenzo is a simple fisherman, a veteran of Mussolini’s war in Ethiopia, and wants nothing to do with this war. He feels obligated to help Giulia escape her pursuers but must rely on people he cannot trust, especially his older brother, Giorgio, a handsome Italian movie star and Fascist collaborator, as well as a Nazi colonel with a curious interest in Giulia’s family. As Cenzo and Giulia wind their way through a maze of deceit, danger, and betrayal, they fall in love amid the turmoil of German retreat, Fascist brutality, and partisan reprisal. Capture, escape, a hoard of stolen gold, a forger, and a Swiss movie producer add action and passion to the novel’s unexpected plot twists, and its most satisfying conclusion. Agent: Andrew Nurnberg, Andrew Nurnberg Associates.

The latest audiobook from Martin Cruz Smith is set during the collapse of the Axis forces in northern Italy at the end of WWII. It's a fascinating place and time, in which no one knows whom to trust and there are spies, collaborators, and competing factions everywhere. Brothers betray brothers as people switch sides, wartime scams come to an end, and the innocent and guilty all try to figure out which way to jump, and how to survive. The dramatis personae have all kinds of accents as well as agendas, and narrator Zach Appelman generally handles them well. His pacing and line readings are also effective, though his delivery can be sloppy. Fans of international thrillers and WWII adventures will be delighted anyway. B.G. � AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine