Review by Kirkus Book Review
The author's Florence-based police procedurals (Death in Springtime, etc.) get better all the time. This one concerns the murder of blonde 40-ish loner Hilde Vogel, fished out of the Arno, who lived for 15 years at the respectable Riverside Hotel and whose disappearance for eight days has caused not a ripple. Ponderous, sharp Marshal Guarnaccia and his Captain Maestrangelo soon find that night-porter Mario Querci was Hilde's only friend, and even he didn't know the source of her comfortable income. The decaying villa left to her by a dissolute, rejecting father was occupied sporadically by young, drug-oriented foreigners, one of them her German son, abandoned years before to the cave of dragon mother-in-law Hannah Vogel. The Captain's interview with Frau Vogel and her bitter account of Hilde's life in Mainz produce the background crucial to identifying a multiple murderer, but only time brings about his punishment. Steadily absorbing, neatly plotted, with a gently poignant resonance rare in the genre. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
