Runaway Horses is by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini. Siena, one of Italy's most beautiful cities, visited by all discerning travellers to Tuscany, is feverishly preparing for the Palio, a horse race dating back to the Middle Ages held every summer in the centre of the town. Milanese lawyer Enzo Maggione and his wife Valeria are unwittingly caught up in the maelstrom of plots, counterplots and bribes surrounding the race. They are even witnesses to the violent death of Puddu, the Palio's most celebrated jockey, found dead the day before the race. A murder mystery, a hilarious portrait of a fading marriage and a decadent society, and a history of the Palio all rolled up into one brilliant novel. What begins as a listless excursion to a medieval equestrian competition turns into a hallucinatory nightmare for Maggione and his wife, awakening their dormant libido for each other but, more dangerously, for others in their entourage. The death of the jockey is only one of the mysterious goings-on to be solved. It soon becomes clear that there are no bystanders in the Palio.
February 2025
The Best Enemy is by Sergio Olguin. A new investigation by Verónica Rosenthal, the audacious Buenos Aires journalist. Andrés Goicochea, a former director of the magazine where she works, and his ex-partner have been executed in cold blood. Her boss, Patricia, is in the hospital with a bullet in her lung. The authorities are trying to pass the murders off as a burglary gone wrong. Veronica has her doubts. The magazine’s investigation of a high-level corruption scandal seems more likely to have triggered the violence. A scandal perhaps influential Argentine businessmen perhaps involved with an Israeli linked to atrocities committed in Gaza years ago.
March 2025
Hunkeler, now a retired inspector of the Basel police force, is hospitalized and sharing a room with Stephan Fankhauser, an old acquaintance terminally ill with cancer. One night, a groggy Hunkeler wakes up to see a young nurse administering an injection to his friend. The following day Fankhauser is found dead. There was no autopsy, and Fankhauser was quickly cremated. Hunkeler resolves to get to the bottom of the matter. His maverick investigation will threaten Switzerland's carefully honed reputation of neutrality during WWII. Hunkeler's Secret is by Hansjorg Schneider.
May 2025
The story begins in 1989 on the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia. The investigation into a young woman’s disappearance falters as Yugoslavia plunges into a fratricidal war. Another three decades will pass before the truth is revealed. Inspector Gorki Šain, haunted by his failure to unravel the case the first time, returns to solve the crime in 2017. We are barely two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, only “an instant” before the shift from one world to another, the shift toward tragedy for a country ultimately forged by war. Red Water is by Jurica Pavičić.
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