Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780140077704
ISBN number: 0140077707
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 165
Printing Date: July 02, 1985
Publishing house: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Sale Popularity Level: 707697
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Praise for Magdalen Nabb:
'The best mystery news in ages is that Soho is restoring to the canon Magdalen Nabb and her tremendous crea-tion, Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia of the Italian police in Florence.'-Chicago Tribune
'First rate. Engrossing, artful, and completely satisfying. Nabb is a fine writer.'-Frank Conroy
'Magdalen Nabb is so good she's awesome.'-The Philadelphia Inquirer
'Nabb is formidable.'-Houston Post
Everyone is so distracted by the phenomenon of a March snowfall in Florence that no one notices two foreign girls being abducted from the piazza at gunpoint in broad daylight. Even Marshal Guarnaccia has trouble piecing together what he has actually seen: tourists in a car holding up a big map, children going to school, a bus, a drug addict on the steps of Santo Spirito church, a single Sardinian bagpiper in a long, grey shepherd's cloak.
One of the girls, a Norwegian university student, turns up in Pontino, a village in the Chianti hills, where she is hospitalized for a concussion, a leg wound, and possible pneumonia. She says she has been released by the kidnappers so she can make contact. The other kidnap victim, an American girl, is being held for ransom. But the marshal thinks she's lying.
Kidnapping has become a local racket. It is up to Marshal Guarnaccia to save the young American and put a stop to a flourishing criminal enterprise.
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Rated by buyers 
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First Sentence: "It can't be."
It is the very first of March and snowing in Florence. This is such an unusual event, no one notice two college woman being kidnapped at gunpoint. One of the girls is released but the second, the daughter of a wealthy American business, is still being held.
Although Marshal Guarnaccia does what he can to help, it is up to Captain Maestrangelo, under the eye of the new Substitute Prosecutor to find and save the girl.
Within 165 pages, Ms. Nabb has provided a well-crafted, classic police procedural. This isn't a guns-blazing, car chase story. It is one of gathering clues, knowing the area and the residents and putting together the evidence piece by piece.
It is certainly evident how different the Italian system is from the American, but at the same time similar in the way the investigation was done and the determination to rescue the victim and find the kidnappers. Nabb provides a visual sense of the area, a bit of history of the Sardinian sheepherders and the impact of changing times.
Guarnaccia plays a minor role in this story, but it is all handled so realistically. I very much enjoyed this book and look forward to continuing with the series.
Rated by buyers 
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I picked up this book because all the blurbs on the jacket compared Nabb's writing to Simenon, who I adore. The comparison is a fair one-- we have the ordinary European detective and the relentlessly pedestrian situations, but something of the bite and wit that Simenon brings to every novel is missing and without that edge, the book only seems a bit bland.
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