Inspector Cataldo's Criminal Summer Luigi Guicciardi
Judith Forshaw

In Guicciardi's intriguing novel, we are taken to Guiglia – a small Italian resort in the Appenines where nothing much seems to happen. But one hot summer the town's peace is shattered by a series of grisly deaths. Inspector Cataldo is drafted in to investigate the first death, an apparent suicide, and is soon engulfed in a mystery that encompasses events that happened 18 years before, a group of childhood friends, and a stranger who has suddenly appeared in Guiglia.

Luigi Guicciardi's protagonist Cataldo is an atypically tall, blond Sicilian, who works methodically and calmly in this, the first in a series of crime novels where the emphasis is very much on solving the puzzle rather than on vivid and unsettling descriptions of violence. Let's hope that new publisher Hersilia provides English readers with the further adventures of Inspector Cataldo.

Inspector Cataldo's Criminal Summer

by Luigi Guicciardi

translated by Iain Halliday

Inspector Cataldo's Criminal Summer is published by Hersilia Press

Posted at 10:42PM Monday 19 Apr 2010