Black run : a novel

Format:

Book

Title:

Black run : a novel

Uniform Title:

Pista nera. English

Author:

Manzini, Antonio, 1964- author

ISBN:

9780062310040

9780062310057

Edition:

First edition.

Publication:

New York, NY : Harper, An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2015]

Physical Description:

ix, 255 pages ; 24 cm

General Note:

Originally published in Italian as Pista Nera in Italy in 2013 by Sellerio Editore.

Summary:

Getting into serious trouble with the wrong people, deputy prefect of police Rocco Schiavone is exiled to Aosta, a small, touristy alpine town far from his beloved Rome. The sophisticated and crotchety Roman despises mountains, snow, and the provincial locals as much as he disdains his superiors and their petty rules. But he loves solving crimes. When a mangled body has been discovered on a ski run above Champoluc, Rocco immediately faces his first challenge--identifying the victim, a complex procedure complicated by his ignorance of the customs, dialect, and history of his new home. Proud and undaunted, Rocco makes his way among the ski runs, mountain huts, and aerial tramways, meeting ski instructors, Alpine guides, the hardworking, enigmatic folk of Aosta, and a few beautiful locals eager to give him a warm welcome. It won't be easy, this mountain life, especially with a corpse or two in the mix. But then there's nothing that makes Rocco feel more at home than an investigation.

Subject(s):

Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction.

Aosta (Italy) -- Fiction.

Italy -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Aosta (Italy) -- Fiction.

Italy -- Fiction.

Italy

Italy -- Aosta

Genre:

Detective and mystery fiction

Fiction

Mystery fiction.

Detective and mystery fiction.

Added Author:

Shugaar, Antony

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Silver Falls Library	MYS MANZINI	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Mount Angel Public Library	MANZINI	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Salem Main Library	MYSTERY Manzini, A.	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Already an international hit, a sly, sizzling mystery--the first in a sensational crime series--set in the Italian Alps, reminiscent of the works of Andrea Camilleri, D. A. Mishani, Donna Leon, and Henning Mankell.

When a mangled body has been discovered on a ski run above Champoluc, Rocco immediately faces his first challenge--identifying the victim, a complex procedure complicated by his ignorance of the customs, dialect, and history of his new home. Proud and undaunted, Rocco makes his way among the ski runs, mountain huts, and aerial tramways, meeting ski instructors, Alpine guides, the hardworking, enigmatic folk of Aosta, and a few beautiful locals eager to give him a warm welcome.

It won't be easy, this mountain life, especially with a corpse or two in the mix. But then there's nothing that makes Rocco feel more at home than an investigation.

An insightful observer of human nature, Antonio Manzini writes with sly humor and a dash of irony, and introduces an irresistible hero--a fascinating blend of swagger, machismo, and vulnerability--in a colorful and atmospheric crime mystery series that is European crime fiction at its best.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone, the urbane but unlikable protagonist of Manzini's English-language debut, has been exiled to the town of Aosta in the Alps after a dustup with his superiors in Rome. As casually arrogant as any Manhattanite forced to endure time away from N.Y.C., he hates the cold and the provincials. What keeps him going is investigating crime, and he's delighted to learn that a body, impossibly mangled, has been discovered by a man grooming a mountain after the day's skiing is done. Schiavone searches for the murderer among a large cast of suspects, all familiar to one another in the small community and many of them related. An inspired sleuth, he's also short-tempered, abusive, and mildly corrupt. The largely comic tone is at odds with the case's gruesome, grisly reality, but many readers will enjoy the unfamiliar Alpine setting and the generally engaging plot. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

Manzini's first English translation presents an irascible policeman who'd rather be back among the fleshpots of his beloved Rome than clambering over a piste in an Alpine resort collecting evidence in a snowy murder case.The mangled corpse that tears Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone from the side of his mistress, Nora, is identifiable only by a tattoo that matches that of the dead man's wife and business partner, Luisa Pec. Leone Micchich, the husband who never came home the night before, had been married barely a year, but already he and Luisa had big plans. They ran Belle Cuneaz, a successful mountainside bar and trattoria that catered to the tourist trade. Leone wanted to sell some properties he held jointly with his brother Domenico in order to raise further working capital. Luisa had recently discovered that she was pregnant. All that ended when someone shoved a handkerchief into Leone's mouth, covered him in snow and abandoned him to his fate, which as it turned out was to be run over by a snowcat operator whose machine tore the body to pieces. Rocco's interest in whodunit is dwarfed by his interest in arranging with his old friend Sebastiano Cecchetti to skim his cut from a marijuana shipment they plan to confiscate, or purchasing appropriate shoes for his unwelcome new case, or making time with the attractive clerk who sells him the shoes, or getting reassigned to Rome at the first opportunity, or joining his long-suffering wife, Marina, in dreaming about Rome in the meantimethough his interests in the Eternal City are clearly different from hers. The suspects are thin as onionskin, and the culprit might have been plucked from a hat. But Rocco's detective chops are as authentic as his crabbiness and his matter-of-fact corruption, and the denouement at Leone's funeral has to set some kind of record for calculated bad taste. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

With his Clark's desert boots and his Roman ways, Deputy Prefect of Police Rocco Schiavone is a fish out of water in the Alpine town of Aosta, where he has been transferred for disciplinary reasons. Contemptuous of his new home and its reserved citizens, the brusque detective comes alive when a mangled corpse is found on one of the pistes above the ski resort of -Champuloc. Working to identify the body and find the killer, Rocco deals with incompetent underlings and petty superiors, grills meek postmasters and arrogant ski instructors, and beds the local women who find him alluring in spite of his crankiness. VERDICT The mystery here is almost beside the point; what keeps the reader glued to the story is Rocco. He's fascinating in his contradictions-sarcastic yet haunted, undaunted in his pursuit of justice yet also slightly underhanded in his methods. Fans of Andrea Camilleri's Sicily-set "Inspector Montalbano" series will enjoy this debut mystery for its sly humor, vividly drawn characters, and amusing cultural clashes between rugged mountaineers and the more urbane southerner. [See -"Editors' Spring Picks," LJ 2/15/15.-Ed.]-Wilda Williams, Library Journal © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.