The Last Enemy
An
Alessandro Cenni Mystery
Grace
Brophy
Soho Crime (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-56947-496-6 (1569474966)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-496-9 (9781569474969)
Publication Date: May 2008
List Price: $13.00
Synopsis (from
the publisher): Rita grew up in Brooklyn, the only child of a
narcissistic Italian mother and the GI she married at the end of World
War II. After her mother's death, she quits her teaching job and
descends upon her poor but aristocratic relatives, the Count and
Countess Casati, in Assisi. It takes a while before they realize, to
their chagrin, that Rita has come to stay. When the family assembles to
watch the penitentes procession in the town square during Easter Week,
a Casati tradition, Rita does not join them as planned. Her corpse is
later found in the family mausoleum.
Alessandro Cenni, a commissario in the State Police of Umbria, and a
handsome bachelor whose twin brother is about to become a bishop, must
penetrate the secrets of the Casati family and their circle if he is to
discover who killed Rita and why. But he is blocked by their powerful
right-wing connections, and by a superior who prefers to arrest a
scapegoat rather than risk political suicide. Aided by a loyal staff in
his quest for that rarity-justice-he still must acknowledge that no one
can defeat the last enemy, death itself.
Review: In her
“Author’s Note” to The
Last Enemy Grace Brophy quotes Dorothy Sayers as claiming that
mystery writers “are obliged by their disagreeable profession to
invent startling and unpleasant incidents and people.”
Brophy’s book, its characters and story amply prove Sayer’s
point but to be fair Brophy has created as many pleasant and engaging
characters as unpleasant ones. So many, in fact, that readers will be
clamouring to learn more about them and their adventures in future
volumes of the Commissario Alessandro Cenni series set in Italy.
Commissario Cenni – “Alex” to his friends and team
members– has all the characteristics for detective stardom. An
avid footballer, he thinks for himself, has a pet and a domineering
mother. He operates as a maverick with the smarts to confound political
interference from his immediate superior, even to push the envelope
with political masterminds in Rome. His wife Chiara was kidnapped and
has never been found. And his twin brother, Renato, is being anointed
in the hierarchy of the church even as Alex and his team of Elena
Ottaviani, Piero Tonni, and Sergeant Genine Antolini investigate the
death of forty-five year-old American Rita Minelli, an apparent
rape-murder victim found strangled on Easter weekend in the crypt of
her Italian aristocratic family relatives. Her early pregnancy provides
additional shock for the crime as well as increasing the pool of
potential suspects and motives. And as Cenni and his crew sort the sand
from the salt in their painstaking investigations, the unpleasant
people and even the unpleasant sides of the pleasing ones are exposed.
A much younger male Canadian companion of Rita’s is jailed for
suspicion on the weakest of grounds while members of the Casati family
with their trappings of nobility run free. A priest proves he’s
only too human in succumbing to sins of the flesh. A Croatian woman, a
staniera, is a top of the list suspect but an attractive distraction
for the Commissario, even though a rival colleague of his, Fulvio
Russo, the womanizing “il lupo to his friends, of whom he had
none,” insists she should be arrested as the obvious murderer.
Then too, there are Lucia, a Casati maid, gossip and liar; the Count
and Countess Casati; their ambitious daughter Artemesia; and Paola her
niece with connections to a bomb plot at a McDonald’s, with each
bringing the secrets of their baggage for Cenni, Elena, Piro and Genine
to assiduously pick through. In the end their sorting is successful and
the readers get to know who the guilty party is. But they also learn
that not every murderer gets to be appropriately punished and that
Italian Commissarios, no matter how well-intentioned, may have to wait
for another day and for the next book in the series to see justice
properly served.
Brophy’s talent is not only for teasing out mysteries but for
exploring human behaviour as well. Her characters are not only rounded
but fully rounded. They can exude faults and foibles but some can be
charming, gracious and likeable too. And whether it is the story or the
development of the characters that Brophy deals with, she writes with
an elegance and richness of language and depth of thought. Readers will
be hard pressed to find a more powerful passage in current literature
than the description of the war crimes transcript for the murder of
Sergio Orlic and the rapes of his wife, Sophie, and their daughter,
Christina that Commissario Cenni uncovers in his investigation of Rita
Minelli’s death. Brophy’s book has major literary merit and
deserves a major audience for her ingenious invention of the
delightfully “startling and unpleasant incidents and
people” in her book.
Special thanks to M. Wayne Cunningham (mw_cunningham@telus.net) for contributing his review of The Last Enemy and to Soho Press for providing a trade paperback edition of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2008 — M. Wayne Cunningham — All Rights Reserved — Reprinted with Permission
Have you read The Last Enemy? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series ...
The Last Enemy
Soho Crime (Trade Paperback), May 2008
ISBN-10: 1-56947-496-6 (1569474966)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-496-9 (9781569474969)
A Deadly Paradise
Soho Crime (Hardcover), May 2008
ISBN-10: 1-56947-491-5 (1569474915)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-491-4 (9781569474914)
Omnimystery keywords for The Last Enemy ...
Location(s) referenced: Assisi, Italy.
