The Missing Italian Girl

December 17, 2012
Pope’s engaging third mystery featuring magistrate Bernard Martin (after 2011’s The Blood of Lorraine) shines a light on both the glamor and the grime of late-19th-century Paris. Two Italian sisters who have grown up in a Paris slum, 17-year-old Maura and 18-year-old Angela Laurenzano, enlist the aid of accused Russian anarchist, Pyotr Ivanovich, in disposing of the body of Angela’s abusive seducer in a canal. After Pyotr disappears, they fear that the police will charge them with murder. When the sisters themselves go missing, Francesca—Maura and Angela’s charwoman mother—turns to Clarie, Bernard’s wife, for assistance. Clarie, who is used to her genteel life as a teacher, must confront a bewildering world of revolutionaries and radicals, of the desperate and the devious. While the plot flounders at points, Clarie’s struggle to balance her role as a bourgeois wife and mother against her investigative instincts will entice readers. Agent: Mollie Glick, Foundry Literary + Media.