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Flowers Over The Inferno by Ilaria Tuti
The Blurb On The Back:
An idyllic village in the Alps.
A legacy of sin.
An evil lurking in the woods.
In a quiet village surrounded by centuries-old woods and the imposing Italian Alps, a series of violent assaults take place.
Police inspector and profiler Teresa Battaglia is called back from the city when the first body is found in the woods, a naked man whose face has been disfigured and eyes gouged out. Teresa quickly realises that the killer intends to strike again, and soon more victims are found - all having been subjected to horrendous mutilations. When a new-born baby is kidnapped, Teresa’s investigation becomes a race against the clock …
But Teresa is also fighting a different kind of battle: a battle against her own body, weighed down by age and diabetes, and her mind, once invincible an now slowly gnawing away at her memory …
Inspector Massimo Marini has just transferred from Rome to the north east of Italy and his first day could not have gotten to a worse start. Arriving late to the station, he discovers that the whole team has gone to the small mountain town of Traveni where a body has been found. Not only is he not dressed for the December cold in the mountains, but when he finally reaches the scene he mistakes his new boss Superintendent Battaglia (a stocky woman in late middle age with dyed red hair) for a witness and introduces himself to their subordinate Officer Parisi instead.
The victim - Robert Valent - had his eyes gouged out and a mannequin wearing his clothes was left near the scene, staring back towards the village. A civil engineer, he was leading on the construction of a new ski resort near the town, which had attracted protests from environmentalists. Marini thinks that they should be looking for Valent’s enemies but Battaglia believes that this is the start of serial killer’s work and as a proven profiler, Marini realises that she may be right.
But Battaglia is keeping something from Marini and her whole team. Although they know about her diabetes, she’s realised that her brilliant mind is starting to fail her. She is forgetting things - names, places, events - and worries that her bid to find out who the killer is will suffer because of it.
As Marini tries to figure his new boss out, they have to contend with more victims until finally a baby goes missing and Battaglia and Marini realise that the roots of these crimes may lie 40 years in the past …
Ilaria Tuti’s debut thriller (the first in a trilogy and translated from Italian by Ekin Oklap) draws on an actual event as the basis for this uneven story of child cruelty and village secrets. Battaglia held my interest with her health issues, the hints at previous spousal abuse and her attempts to deal with the onset of Alzheimer’s but the profiling feels very old-fashioned and her relationship with the under-developed Marini doesn’t convince.
I picked this up because I always enjoy a good thriller and am making a conscious effort to read those translated from other languages because they offer a different perspective and ways of telling a story.
The sections of this book set in an Austrian orphanage in 1978 were - for me - the most interesting. Tuti creates a real eeriness and sense of wrongness in the locations particularly through the perspective of Nurse Agnes as she visits her charges in The Hive and notably the child in bed number 39 and I was really looking forward to seeing how that ties in with the modern day murder. Unfortunately they also throw up the big weakness of the book, which is that the different elements of this story never get brought together in a satisfying way. Key developments/revelations happen off page and then get brought in so when Battaglia realises who is really responsible for the crimes, it felt like a big cheat. In part this is because it relies on a rapprochement between Battaglia and Marini in the final quarter that we don’t see (although there are previous hints that relations are thawing). Some of this can be explained by Battaglia’s Alzheimer’s but to be honest that just feeds into the feeling that the reader is being cheated given that Tuti also has chapters from Marini’s point of view and there’s little hint on his side of what is going on.
This is a shame because Battaglia has an interesting background. There are hints in the book that she has endured something traumatic in her past - something that meant she does not have children and potentially spousal abuse judging by a conversation she has with one character to gain their trust. She is a brilliant psychological profiler and investigator, able to see the currents flowing beneath the surface in people’s relationships but also acerbic, solitary and not above engaging in bullying her subordinates. For all that the other members of the team are apparently devoted to her (and it would be interesting to have more of that relationship teased out in the remaining two books because other than Marini they are little more than names on the page and easily interchangeable).
Her fear at her mental deterioration does ring true, however, as does her relationship with her aging body. About two thirds of the way through the book Tuti decides to have Battaglia start keeping a diary in order to keep track of her thoughts, which I did find a little hackneyed as a device although I suspect it will work better in the future books and it did lead to a neat exchange between her and the culprit. I did find her profiling pronouncements to be very old hat though - there is nothing here that you would not have seen in dozens of books and TV shows and movies and it all feels somewhat overblown and breathless. I actually agreed with Marini when he calls her out on making claims without any apparent evidence for the same.
Unfortunately Marini is underdeveloped as a character. Again, there are some hints of something in his past that have led to his departure from Rome and we know that he’s young and quite handsome. There is scope for his relationship with Battaglia to develop but there is a long way to go.
Oklap’s translation is solid. The text flows quite well and there are some rich and vivid descriptions and imagery at play, notably in describing the cold and the forest. My issues with the book come more with the underlying structure and plotting, which I do not believe can be countered in translation.
Ultimately this is not a bad book - if you have enjoyed other fictional profilers then you’re likely to enjoy this - but I’m not sure that it’s really for me and as such, I’m not going to rush to read the sequel.
The Verdict:
Ilaria Tuti’s debut thriller (the first in a trilogy and translated from Italian by Ekin Oklap) draws on an actual event as the basis for this uneven story of child cruelty and village secrets. Battaglia held my interest with her health issues, the hints at previous spousal abuse and her attempts to deal with the onset of Alzheimer’s but the profiling feels very old-fashioned and her relationship with the under-developed Marini doesn’t convince.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
A legacy of sin.
An evil lurking in the woods.
In a quiet village surrounded by centuries-old woods and the imposing Italian Alps, a series of violent assaults take place.
Police inspector and profiler Teresa Battaglia is called back from the city when the first body is found in the woods, a naked man whose face has been disfigured and eyes gouged out. Teresa quickly realises that the killer intends to strike again, and soon more victims are found - all having been subjected to horrendous mutilations. When a new-born baby is kidnapped, Teresa’s investigation becomes a race against the clock …
But Teresa is also fighting a different kind of battle: a battle against her own body, weighed down by age and diabetes, and her mind, once invincible an now slowly gnawing away at her memory …
Inspector Massimo Marini has just transferred from Rome to the north east of Italy and his first day could not have gotten to a worse start. Arriving late to the station, he discovers that the whole team has gone to the small mountain town of Traveni where a body has been found. Not only is he not dressed for the December cold in the mountains, but when he finally reaches the scene he mistakes his new boss Superintendent Battaglia (a stocky woman in late middle age with dyed red hair) for a witness and introduces himself to their subordinate Officer Parisi instead.
The victim - Robert Valent - had his eyes gouged out and a mannequin wearing his clothes was left near the scene, staring back towards the village. A civil engineer, he was leading on the construction of a new ski resort near the town, which had attracted protests from environmentalists. Marini thinks that they should be looking for Valent’s enemies but Battaglia believes that this is the start of serial killer’s work and as a proven profiler, Marini realises that she may be right.
But Battaglia is keeping something from Marini and her whole team. Although they know about her diabetes, she’s realised that her brilliant mind is starting to fail her. She is forgetting things - names, places, events - and worries that her bid to find out who the killer is will suffer because of it.
As Marini tries to figure his new boss out, they have to contend with more victims until finally a baby goes missing and Battaglia and Marini realise that the roots of these crimes may lie 40 years in the past …
Ilaria Tuti’s debut thriller (the first in a trilogy and translated from Italian by Ekin Oklap) draws on an actual event as the basis for this uneven story of child cruelty and village secrets. Battaglia held my interest with her health issues, the hints at previous spousal abuse and her attempts to deal with the onset of Alzheimer’s but the profiling feels very old-fashioned and her relationship with the under-developed Marini doesn’t convince.
I picked this up because I always enjoy a good thriller and am making a conscious effort to read those translated from other languages because they offer a different perspective and ways of telling a story.
The sections of this book set in an Austrian orphanage in 1978 were - for me - the most interesting. Tuti creates a real eeriness and sense of wrongness in the locations particularly through the perspective of Nurse Agnes as she visits her charges in The Hive and notably the child in bed number 39 and I was really looking forward to seeing how that ties in with the modern day murder. Unfortunately they also throw up the big weakness of the book, which is that the different elements of this story never get brought together in a satisfying way. Key developments/revelations happen off page and then get brought in so when Battaglia realises who is really responsible for the crimes, it felt like a big cheat. In part this is because it relies on a rapprochement between Battaglia and Marini in the final quarter that we don’t see (although there are previous hints that relations are thawing). Some of this can be explained by Battaglia’s Alzheimer’s but to be honest that just feeds into the feeling that the reader is being cheated given that Tuti also has chapters from Marini’s point of view and there’s little hint on his side of what is going on.
This is a shame because Battaglia has an interesting background. There are hints in the book that she has endured something traumatic in her past - something that meant she does not have children and potentially spousal abuse judging by a conversation she has with one character to gain their trust. She is a brilliant psychological profiler and investigator, able to see the currents flowing beneath the surface in people’s relationships but also acerbic, solitary and not above engaging in bullying her subordinates. For all that the other members of the team are apparently devoted to her (and it would be interesting to have more of that relationship teased out in the remaining two books because other than Marini they are little more than names on the page and easily interchangeable).
Her fear at her mental deterioration does ring true, however, as does her relationship with her aging body. About two thirds of the way through the book Tuti decides to have Battaglia start keeping a diary in order to keep track of her thoughts, which I did find a little hackneyed as a device although I suspect it will work better in the future books and it did lead to a neat exchange between her and the culprit. I did find her profiling pronouncements to be very old hat though - there is nothing here that you would not have seen in dozens of books and TV shows and movies and it all feels somewhat overblown and breathless. I actually agreed with Marini when he calls her out on making claims without any apparent evidence for the same.
Unfortunately Marini is underdeveloped as a character. Again, there are some hints of something in his past that have led to his departure from Rome and we know that he’s young and quite handsome. There is scope for his relationship with Battaglia to develop but there is a long way to go.
Oklap’s translation is solid. The text flows quite well and there are some rich and vivid descriptions and imagery at play, notably in describing the cold and the forest. My issues with the book come more with the underlying structure and plotting, which I do not believe can be countered in translation.
Ultimately this is not a bad book - if you have enjoyed other fictional profilers then you’re likely to enjoy this - but I’m not sure that it’s really for me and as such, I’m not going to rush to read the sequel.
The Verdict:
Ilaria Tuti’s debut thriller (the first in a trilogy and translated from Italian by Ekin Oklap) draws on an actual event as the basis for this uneven story of child cruelty and village secrets. Battaglia held my interest with her health issues, the hints at previous spousal abuse and her attempts to deal with the onset of Alzheimer’s but the profiling feels very old-fashioned and her relationship with the under-developed Marini doesn’t convince.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.