I Will Have Vengeance

Book excerpt: Introducing Italy’s Commissario Ricciardi. “De Giovanni’s distinct brand of noir . . . will appeal to Agatha Christie and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán fans” (Publishers Weekly). Commissario Ricciardi has visions. He sees the final seconds in the lives of victims of violent deaths. It is both a gift and a curse. It has helped him become one of the most successful homicide detectives on the Naples police front. But the horror of his visions has hollowed him out emotionally. He drinks too much and sleeps too little. Other than his loyal partner, Brigadier Maione, he has no friends. Naples, March 1931. A bitter wind stalks the city streets, and murder lies at its cold heart. When the world’s greatest tenor, Maestro Arnaldo Vezzi, is found brutally murdered in his dressing room at Naples’ San Carlo Theatre, the enigmatic and aloof Commissario Ricciardi is called in to investigate. Arrogant and bad-tempered, Vezzi was adored by millions and hated by hundreds, but with the livelihoods of everyone at the San Carlo opera at stake, who there would have committed such an act? Ricciardi is determined to find out. Fans of Donna Leon and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán will thrill to this fresh voice in crime fiction. I Will Have Vengeance is the first book in a quartet of masterful crime novels set in fascist Italy. “A welcome addition to the pantheon of Italian crime fiction . . . Ricciardi is a suitably principled, charismatic yet enigmatic detective.” —Euro Crime “The combination of an unusual detective, historical setting and Italian opera was impossible to resist.” —Crimetime.co.uk