The Man In Milan
Vito Racanelli
Polis Books, November 2020
ISBN 978-1-951709-27-3
Hardcover
On an April evening at Sutton Place in New York City, NYPD detective Paul Rossi finds a well-dressed dead man in the gutter. He’s been terminated by two carefully placed bullets, one in the chest, the other to the back of his head. It’s obviously an execution. Turns out the deceased is a former fighter pilot from the Italian Air Force.
The murder, then the precision-like burglary and destruction of the pilot’s estranged wife’s apartment, lead the detective team of Rossi and partner Hamilton P. Turner, into a morass of international intrigue, corruption, and more death.
Rossi, Italian-American and Detective Turner, a multi-talented African-American poet, opera buff and former lawyer are sent to Rome, following leads and beset by a nasty reporter from a New York rag who had been contacted by the dead pilot. The question is why?
The answers apparently lie in an old mystery. And while the story winds its convoluted way through Italian society, several more deaths occur, including three women who are casually cast aside, leading, I suspect, some readers to question the attitude of the author to the values of women in the story line.
The plot moves at a reasonable pace, logically follows discovery after discovery, with some clever bits to strengthen the narrative, to a rational conclusion. The narrative concludes with the open possibility of further adventures of these two detectives.
Reviewed by Carl Brookins, December 2020.
http://www.carlbrookins.com http://agora2.blogspot.com
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