Flowers Over the Inferno in Around the World in 80 Books

Aug 10, 2020 Julie Griffin rated it it was amazing

A beautifully written and melancholic study of life through the eyes of a faltering police chief searching for a killer in the snow-covered and pine-guarded ancient forests of the Italian Alps.
Teresa Battaglia is facing her own internal snow as she is slowly losing her sharpness and her physical independence in late middle age. She fights against these intruders as she surges into a small ski resort town when a body is found missing it's eyes. The body is the husband and father of a young famil A beautifully written and melancholic study of life through the eyes of a faltering police chief searching for a killer in the snow-covered and pine-guarded ancient forests of the Italian Alps.
Teresa Battaglia is facing her own internal snow as she is slowly losing her sharpness and her physical independence in late middle age. She fights against these intruders as she surges into a small ski resort town when a body is found missing it's eyes. The body is the husband and father of a young family in the village, and no one has a clue why he'd be targeted. Was it his management of a ski resort that is even now clearing trees from part of the mountains, or something more personal? Others in the village suffer losses too, and a young girl reports seeing a "ghost" with no face watching her from the fringes of the woods behind her home. Battaglia and her, to her, infuriating new detective follow clues back to an old orphanage across the border in Austria, and the sad secrets it covered. The village and the surrounding forest are as much a character as Battaglia and her assistant, Massimo. This book is the opposite of the usual sun-drenched Tuscany more common in Italian mysteries, and very much a modern take on noir. The noir is rooted in the author's formation in these landscapes of North Eastern Italy, and in actual horrific experiments on orphaned children undergone in Austria in the last years of WWII. Not an easy book to read but a rewarding one. I hope we get to follow Teresa Battaglia in more mysteries. Tuti has created a great character here, who may remind some readers of Ann Cleeves' great Vera Stanhope in her solitude. She dedicates the book to her. "This novel is also dedicated to the many Teresa Battaglias of this world, those who wake up more tired every passing day, and who battle solitude and illnesses of the kind that Target both the body and the mind. May they never cease to love themselves." Battaglia is a character I could easily find myself growing fond of and loving, as well. ...more

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