Like the best of mysteries, Red Riviera has deep roots in the tumult of World War II. The war was not kind to Italy, which had fallen under the spell of a bombastic leader who ended his war executed by partisans, his corpse hung by its heels next to his mistress.
Some of the people and much of the philosophy lived on. This book is the story of a talented police commissioner from Genoa, a woman rising toward the pinnacle of the police establishment at the same time she fears approaching spinsterhood, and of her efforts to learn why a retired American spy, a native of Genoa, disappeared at the same time Canadair water bombers were trying to extinguish fires in the forests and brush overlooking the Ligurian Coast.
That’s not the only problem she has. HER vice questor is a couple of notches more diabolical than the one Guido Brunetti must deal with in Venice. He's not at all convinced modern Italy is ready for democracy.
Daria Vinci is the headline character but the propulsive force of the story comes from two old men. The first is Daria’s godfather Willem Bremach, born to wealth in Genoa, a Spitfire pilot turned Dutch diplomat, cold warrior, and best friend of Daria’s late father, an Italian.
The other is Joseph Gary, hedonist, former American spy and a man whose past, in Churchill’s words, is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. After a long absence he has returned to the wealthy town of Rapallo, up the Italian Riviera from Genoa. For a couple of guys several years past their ninetieth birthdays they are bursting with energy — physical in Gary’s case, mental in Bremach’s while he is out of action from a tennis injury but not completely idle. Watch for it.
I have admired David Downie’s books for their lively and realistic character development since I first found them a decade ago. His previous novel, The Gardener of Eden, was set on a broad stage peopled with varied and captivating characters, also with a historical element. The skill extends to his non-fiction books, of which there have been many. My favorite remains Paris, Paris, which I still view as the best guide to Paris I have ever read, and I refer back to my copy frequently.
Red Riviera is set on the Ligurian Coast of Italy between France and Tuscany, part of which is known to tourists as the Cinque Terre (or “Sink-we Terry,” as Willem Bremach parodies the flocks of anglophone tourists who roost there during the tourist season). Some are barely tolerated guests of his wife in the elegant old house overlooking “the ancient olive trees and blackish-green flame cypresses planted by his grandfather on the terraces below.”
It is from this house that Willem, recovering from a tennis injury and confined to a wheelchair, spots Joseph Gary’s elegant antique speedboat moored in the sea below, as it is every day at the same time. But there’s no Joseph to be found, even after Daria starts her investigation, and it is in unwinding that mystery that Downie skillfully illuminates Italian society, politics, and the dark authoritarian strain that has hidden just below the surface of Italian life and government since Willem’s Spitfire was shot down along the same coastline in 1945.
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Top reviews from other countries
massone marcello
Se ami i luoghi della riviera ligure e gli intrighi polizieschi...
Reviewed in Italy on January 1, 2024
Lagoon
A clever story but one too long in the making.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 5, 2021