The Second Day of the Renaissance

March 6, 2017
Fans of Williams’s series set in Northern Italy will welcome the sixth appearance of Commissario Piero Trotti, last seen in 1996’s Big Italy. Now 68 and retired, Trotti is traveling by train from Padania to Rome when he meets a 21-year-old American woman, Wilma Barclay, whose father has disappeared. Trotti later stops off in Siena, where an old acquaintance in the Carabinieri warns him that a professional killer, Enzo Beltoni, is after him. While trying to stay one step ahead of his pursuer, Trotti becomes immersed in the life, loves, and unsolved 1988 murder of Valerio Gracchi, who was a member of a liberal political movement, Lotta Continua, and had ties to Beltoni. Eventually, a connection emerges between Wilma’s missing father and the Gracchi case. Readers of this cerebral, melancholy tale will hope to see more of the conflicted Trotti, a man heavy with regret, who, when confronted with the possibility of death, fervently wishes for it, yet also desires to live. Agent: Massimiliano Zantedeschi, Trentin e Zantedeschi Literary Agency (Italy).

March 15, 2017
In his sixth outing, a retired detective tries to determine the identity of a clever killer who's seeking revenge against him.In Florence, retired policeman Piero Trotti assists Wilma Barclay, a young American who seems lost, and takes her under his wing. In Siena, he meets Gen. Spadano, a former colleague himself contemplating retirement, who coolly informs Trotti that a professional killer is after him. The philosophical Trotti contemplates his own mortality for a remarkably long time before deciding to protect himself. Long-winded Spadano turns the revelation of the would-be killer into a shaggy dog story, complete with coffee breaks, Mafia references, and a brace of likely suspects, including postwar revolutionaries, corrupt politicians, and crime lords. Chief among these is Lia Guerro, the lover of crusading journalist Signor Gracchi, whose death she likely blames on Trotti (wrongly, in his opinion). With Wilma and his mental catalog of past enemies in tow, Trotti continues his rail journey. He tracks down and talks to a handful of former antagonists in his efforts to get to the truth and avert personal tragedy. Readers who suspect that Wilma's continuing connection with Trotti is not accidental can congratulate themselves on their astuteness. There's some confusion in the piecemeal mosaic of complex episodes and speculations from Trotti's past, but it's hard to resist Williams (Big Italy, 2015, etc.) as he unfolds his tale in tiny, deliciously wry narrative nuggets--100 titled chapters of puckish literary pointillism.

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May 1, 2017
Williams' Commissario Trotti series isn't widely known in the U.S., but Soho Press' recent release of the first five Trotti novels, paired with the publication of this sixth entry, should help change that. Now retired after his career ended in scandal, Trotti is traveling to a family wedding when he encounters a young American woman in Florence and agrees to help find her Italian father. Matters are further complicated when he stops in Siena and learns from a former colleague that a man with a grudge against Trotti has returned to Italy to kill him. The melancholy Trotti, despite greeting news of his possible death with something like relief, reluctantly reinvestigates a cold case that may lead him to the would-be hit man. Like Henning Mankell's The Troubled Man (2011), this leisurely paced novel is as much about an aging detective pondering his own mortality as it is about solving a crime. The various plot strands come together in a sometimes-confusing blend of past and present, but Williams successfully draws us into Trotti's mind as he vacillates between despair and defiance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)