Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna

October 1, 2018

Having launched his career here with Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions, a Discover and an IndieNext pick, Munich-born Giordano continues the story of the Prosecco-guzzling Auntie Poldi, who has retired to Sicily from Germany only to find mayhem amid the gaudy melon-flowers. Here, a dog's poisoning and a neighbor's disrupted water supply presage trouble from the Mafia, and soon there's a corpse in the vineyard.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2019
When Auntie Poldi loses her inner equilibrium, it takes a volcano to restore her to balance.Having decided after all not to drink herself to death with a comfortable view of the sea (Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions, 2015), Bavarian expatriate Isolde Oberreiter has settled into a pleasant routine in her villa in Torre Archirafi. Mondays: the beach. Tuesdays: the fish market with Uncle Martino. Wednesdays: language school in Taormina. Thursdays: tea with her neighbor Valérie. Fridays, sex with Commissario Vito Montana. Saturdays: gin rummy with Signora Cocuzza and Padre Paolo. But routines can do only so much to tame a force of nature like Poldi, as she is known to her family, friends, and neighbors, which include the entire population of Torre Archirafi and a good bit of neighboring Catania. Soon she's on a quest: to find out who killed Lady, Valérie's scruffy, gentle mongrel. Vito inadvertently provides her first clue. Invested in a brand of pillow talk only he and Poldi could devise, he concludes one Friday afternoon's adventures with an account of the death of Elisa Puglisi, a member of Catania's provincial Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia, who was conked by a bottle of Polifemo. Well, anyone depraved enough to kill a district attorney might do the same to a defenseless animal, and next thing you know, Poldi is riding her multicolored Vespa up the slopes of Etna to the Avola vineyard, the source of the bottle that put a premature end to Puglisi's career. And because Poldi "was just not made for compromises, for the grey areas of life, for rear-view mirrors, loopholes or get-out clauses," she pushes forward to an encounter with a winemaker that proves as explosive as the hill beneath her feet.Giordano gives his heroine's second outing as much punch as her debut. Long may she reign.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.