TINA, MAFIA SOLDIER, Striking New Sicilian Crime Fiction from Maria Rosa Cutrufelli

The opening chapters of TINA, MAFIA SOLDIER go very slowly, as the narrator—would-be author of a biography of Cettina, now Tina, a Mafia youth—renews her acquaintance with Gela, a city in Sicily. This harsh frontier-like city, once a coveted location in ancient history, is now a battered orphan of the petrochemical industry. Its historic face has vanished; instead, the narrator sees it as "Young and cruel. It's a cruel landscape that I find hard to recognize and doesn't correspond to the map of my memory anymore."

The city itself reeks of masculine violence and brutality. But embedded in it today is Tina, a' masculidda, Tina the little tomboy, documented in a folder the narrator carries with her. Recently imprisoned, Tina isn't yet 20 years old, but her leadership of her small teen gang within the Mafia culture has brought her strength and notoriety.

The quest for Tina herself begins with interview upon interview of relatives and friends of this "Mafia soldier" in hopes of gaining a visit with the prisoner, who can choose whether or not to admit someone, almost a bizarre form of royalty. And in fact, Tina is a figure worth admiring, even worshiping, with her motorbike, her weapons, the loyalty she's demanded and inspired.

Bear with this narrator and the translation (by Robin Pickering-Jazzi), because the discomfort of the chapters builds toward an awkward yet compelling understanding of Tina herself and the "cruel" city that has brought her into being. A sexual intermediate, neither muscled male nor seductive female, Tina is a quintessential "other," trans in every aspect of her being.

Here is a taste of Tina, struggling to outwait the customers at the beauty salon operated by her cousin Giovanna:

The roots of her bad mood sank down into embedded realities that were different and deeper than dissatisfaction or unfulfilled needs. She would have liked to make a spectacular entrance that day. She dreamed of the splendor of an entrance worthy of her. The Alfa 164 and black leather jacket. ... "Did you all see her? Rambo." Constraining her to give tough answers, always poised on a razor's edge.

Then there's Tina's friend Graziella, who works for a production company and represents another side of the muddled sexuality and violence of the place:

Graziella is a nervous brunette who's going back and forth between a printer and a video, extricating herself from snarls of wires that are hanging down and getting entangled between stools and tables, obviously hindering her movements. But more than her exuberant nature, I think it's her still very young age that makes her easily confront a job whose dangers she doesn't see, even though she knows perfectly well what they are, and complain about the job just being temporary.

Though men are interviewed too, it's the women who love Tina for herself and would do anything for her. Giovanna, for instance, "raises the cigarette to her mouth, a darting little snake with a pointed tip, and says as she exhales the smoke, 'She's a warrior.' A reverential fear that gradually dissolves in veiled disapproval."

By the time our narrator finally forms a connection with Tina herself, the grim, assaultive, and sexually confusing journey into the teenager's life, into the Cosa Nostra, into Sicily and its asphyxiative presence, has changed her irretrievably. What she will facilitate at last for Tina will tear apart the fabric she has spent so much time and effort crafting, as she calls Tina out of the cell and into compelling pages.

TINA, MAFIA SOLDIER is complex, with seductive metaphors and a grimly poisonous atmosphere that daunts the emergence of any necessary self-love. Once it picks up speed, it's compelling and potent. There can be no return to any mythic Sicily after this fictive immersion in reality provided by Sicilian-born Maria Rosa Cutrufelli.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Stone Barrington Tackles the "Five Families" in New Suspense from Stuart Woods

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

Clearly, Stuart Woods never runs out of ideas. Among his more than 75 titles, the Stone Barrington books make up the largest share: A Delicate Touch looks like the 48th featuring this New Yorker and his circle of employees, friends, informants, and most importantly, police detective Dino Bacchetti. He’ll need all of them to protect his life, as the contents of a hidden safe place him into direct conflict with the most powerful crime families of the region.

Dino’s ex-wife Mary Ann is the daughter of a reputed Mafia leader, Eduardo Bianchi; about to let go of her deceased father’s house to a museum, Mary Ann’s discovered a massive safe—and of course she doesn’t have the combination. Stone Barrington’s immediate assignment is to locate a safecracker to handle the pre-war German mechanism. Hence the need for “a delicate touch”: mess up the combination and the safe becomes even more impossible to ever open.

The safecracker recruited, Sol Fink, is one of the early delights of this entertaining mystery. About a century old, Sol’s the only person in America who can handle the challenge, and he’ll need to be “sprung” from the assisted living home in order to tackle it.

His voice was strong, and he was ramrod straight in his posture. Stone hadn’t expected that.

‘Before you ask,’ Sol said, ‘I’m a hundred and four years old … It’s not my fault,’ Sol replied, climbing into the rear seat. ‘I did everything that’s supposed to kill you, except smoking, so I should have been dead fifty years ago.’

Stone got up front with Fred. ‘Then from now on, Sol,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘I will adopt you as my personal example.’

Opening the safe puts Stone and his crew into enormous danger. Written testimonies in it, probably once “insurance” to protect Bianchi from blackmail, reveal federal crimes committed by members of the notorious “Five Families” of the Italian mob of New York City and beyond. Stone’s happy to turn the records over to Dino and his police squad for investigation, but unfortunately the “owner” of the documents, Mary Ann, can’t resist talking about the contents to a descendant of one of those implicated—a man about to run for President, and whose past and present probably connect to a massive and deadly criminal enterprise.

Wisely, Stone gets out of town, with a few others at risk. But he’s got to return at some point, and nobody crosses Jack Thomas and his political dream boy Hank without violent consequences.

The plot’s clever and involves the owners and top journalists of the city’s premier newspaper. Woods, a pro at keeping the plates spinning, creates a stellar performance of risk, intrigue, and hard-won escapes for his very experienced protagonist, so the big question is, what will Stone have to trade to ensure his and his family’s long-term safety?

This is a classic “Mafia crime” mystery, told in a chatty and delightful way. Don’t count on memorable tropes or depth, as they are not the point of Woods’s efforts. But go ahead and bet on Stone Barrington to work things out. And if you’re going along for the ride, as Dino will be from time to time, be sure to bring a dinner jacket. Stone solves crimes in style.

New this week from Putnam.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Italian Mystery Series Debut from Mario Giordano, AUNTIE POLDI AND THE SICILIAN LIONS

What a great trend, to have European mysteries being translated at a newly rapid pace to bring fresh settings and attitudes to American readers! AUNTIE POLDI AND THE SILICILAN LIONS was written in German, even though Mario Giordano is the son of Italian immigrants to Germany. So its arrival in "the States" via Houghton Mifflin Harcourt meant translation by John Brownjohn (deftly!), with healthy dashes of Italian exclamations left in place. This confusion of heritage also means there's a lot of varied culture packed into the book, and the first few chapters are tough going -- Aunti Poldi, known formally to her new neighbors as Donna Poldina, is from Bavaria, a "free state" of Germany, and her formal name is Isolde Oberreiter. After some years of sorrow -- a challenging marriage, then widowhood and abrupt loss of funding, and some chaos in Africa that we never quite learn about -- Poldi has opted for a fresh start, near the sisters of her late husband, in Sicily. And with a view of the sea.

Adding to the mild confusion in the book's opening is the author's choice of double narrators: both Poldi herself in "third person," and her would-be writer nephew, to whom she is explaining what's taken place whenever he's back to visit her. After a while, I settled into the routine, and by about one-third through, I was totally in Poldi's pocket, eager to see how she would assess a crime scene and simultaneously open doors for her own passionate sense of life as crammed with love and erotic delight (or pierced by the lack of them!). How do the two narrations work? Here's a snippet, as Poldi's seaside walk leads her to the corpse of the missing hired helper Valentino she's been searching for:

When Poldi came nearer a cloud of flies rose from the remains of his head.

With a groan, she knelt down beside him. Just crouched beside the corpse, whimpering softly as if that age-old song of grief could bring him back to life. The big pebbles hurt her knees, but she scarcely felt the pain. She grasped his left hand, which was as cold and hard and dry as the stones on the beach.

"Oh, Valentino, why did you never say a word?"

She fondled his cold hand and stared at the sea and the rising sun, to avoid having to look at him. It wasn't her first dead body and she wasn't easily shocked, but the sight of the mangled face affected her deeply. She turned her head away and tried to concentrate on his hand, on his dirty fingernails and the familiar tattoo.

At length, however, she forced herself to look.

"That was when I made Valentino a promise," she told me later. "An almost automatic process was at work, that's why. It was genetically conditioned."

"You mean a kind of ... criminalistic hereditary reflex?" I asked, remembering the psychology course I'd dropped out of.

"Bullsh**. It was the hunting instinct." She looked at me. "Either you've got it or you haven't."

From here on, Auntie Poldi is hunting for the killer.  It won't be easy -- she's making friends in her new neighborhood, but she's still a ways from feeling accepted by Sicily, and her outbursts of Bavarian language (and insight) aren't always welcome. With a marvelous cast of characters, from the sexy (but unable to commit) police investigator, to the wealthy landowner obsessed with the German poet Hölderlin, to her new French friend Valérie, to her helpful and eager sisters-in-law, Poldi plunges into Sicilian entanglements. And crime solving -- she's determined to be the first to reveal the killer. (Uh-oh.)

Even during the slow first few chapters, something about Poldi and her nephew pulled me into this "amateur-sleuth" mystery -- and by the second half of the book, I was scooting away from other work on the flimsiest of excuses, just to catch up with Poldi's next charge forward. I liked the clever chapter openers, too, which hinted at what would emerge. And I found the ending delightful -- including its clear opening for more Auntie Poldi books ahead. (This interview with the author reveals that two more are already written.)

I already have three people in mind to whom I'd like to give a copy of this rollicking, passionate, and engaging mystery -- perhaps the best metric of how good a book is.  Looking forward to more. Forza, Aunti Poldi!

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.