A Dead Man in Naples

October 5, 2009
Pearce’s sixth mystery to feature Scotland Yard’s Sandor Seymour (after 2008’s A Dead Man in Barcelona
) deftly mixes humor with a whodunit plot. A couple of years before WWI, the Foreign Office sends Seymour to Italy to unofficially investigate the stabbing death of Lionel Scampion, a British consular representative. As a diplomat, Scampion wasn’t altogether satisfactory, going so far in his enthusiasm as to volunteer to fight for Italy in its war with Libya. Seymour must consider a hypothesis raised at the inquest that Scampion’s murder had to do with a rivalry between bicycling clubs as well as the possibility that the killer acted from political or personal motives. As in the author’s better-known Mamur Zapt series (The Mark of the Pasha
, etc.), Pearce does better at clever word play and investing his characters with charming foibles than establishing clues to buttress a fair-play solution. Still, this entry stands as the best to date in the Dead Man series.

Fans of Michael Pearce's popular Dead Man series know that narrator Bill Wallis is the equivalent of a full-cast recording. Moroccan and Libyan women, English men, Italian teenagers? No problem. Loads of dialogue? Easy. Pacing long bits of narrative? Wallis is a master--with the added gift of a beautiful voice. Listeners can simply sit back and relish the madcap plot. It's 1913 Naples. A British consular official with close ties to the poet-revolutionary D'Annunzio has been stabbed. Enter Special Branch Agent Sandor Seymour, who ultimately solves the case but not before taking us on a tour of the intrigues of prewar Italy and the fascinations of Naples. R.E.K. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine