Big Italy

JACKET NOTES:  After what seems like several lifetimes as a policeman Commissario Trotti can't wait to retire to the villa he jointly owns with his cousin, but things keep getting in the way.

Like Fabrizio Bassi, for instance, with his camel-hair coat and his doughy complexion. Trotti knows Bassi well--he was a policeman for ten years before being booted out and setting up his own detective agency--and the last thing a cop with rearing chickens on his mind wants is to be associated with a seedy PI with a bee in his bonnet about a murdered doctor and a conspiracy theory to match.

Cherchez Ia femme, indeed! So what if someone wants Bassi dead? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred they don't get round to it. And on top of all this, Trotti's boss wants him to head up a child abuse unit...

Big Italy is a rich, complex, ambiguous mystery of politics, corruption, love--and death. Like Italy herself, this latest Trotti novel--Timothy Williams's fifth--is endlessly fascinating.
(©Victor Gollancz Ltd.)