cover image The Second Day of the Renaissance

The Second Day of the Renaissance

Timothy Williams. Soho Crime, $26.95 (336p) ISBN 978-1-61695-720-9

Fans of Williams’s series set in Northern Italy will welcome the sixth appearance of Commissario Piero Trotti, last seen in 1996’s Big Italy. Now 68 and retired, Trotti is traveling by train from Padania to Rome when he meets a 21-year-old American woman, Wilma Barclay, whose father has disappeared. Trotti later stops off in Siena, where an old acquaintance in the Carabinieri warns him that a professional killer, Enzo Beltoni, is after him. While trying to stay one step ahead of his pursuer, Trotti becomes immersed in the life, loves, and unsolved 1988 murder of Valerio Gracchi, who was a member of a liberal political movement, Lotta Continua, and had ties to Beltoni. Eventually, a connection emerges between Wilma’s missing father and the Gracchi case. Readers of this cerebral, melancholy tale will hope to see more of the conflicted Trotti, a man heavy with regret, who, when confronted with the possibility of death, fervently wishes for it, yet also desires to live. Agent: Massimiliano Zantedeschi, Trentin e Zantedeschi Literary Agency (Italy). (May)