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Suspicion
A Novel
Laura Grimaldi
Translated by Robin Pickering-Iazzi
Terrace Books, a trade imprint
of the University of Wisconsin Press
A literary thriller from Italy's
queen of crime
In the shadow of the "Monster of Florence," a serial
murderer who has terrorized Italy for seventeen years, Laura
Grimaldi sets her tense psychological thriller Suspicion—a
noir mystery of a city transformed by fear, and of friendships
and family ties twisted by uncertainty and dark speculation.
Grimaldi, whose hardboiled mysteries of the 1950s earned her
the title "Italy's queen of crime," turns here to the
deeper, more elusive and disturbing questions that haunt human
affairs.
For years Matilde, the widow of a prominent Florentine doctor,
has lived alone with her eccentric middle-aged son, Enea. When
the police pay a call, the balance between mother and son is
shifted just subtly enough to make Matilde prey to suspicions
and doubts that grow ever more corrosive, ever harder to conceal
and more dangerous to reveal. In the literary tradition of such
mystery writers as Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell, Grimaldi
creates an atmosphere charged with suspense as the daily lives
and routines of her characters, infected with suspicion, begin
to rearrange themselves around a few frightening facts and infinite
monstrous possibilities.
Matilde's efforts to decipher Enea's secretive movements and
occupations appear perfectly sensible and defensible through
Grimaldi's deft shifts between mother and son—and another,
chillingly detached perspective on the gruesome murders. Grimaldi's
readers will find themselves as subject to misinterpretation
and doubt, to sympathies and suspicions as her Florentine characters,
and spellbound until the book's final page.
"A tortured walk through the winding streets and twisted
minds of modern Florence and Florentines. . . . leaves its readers
. . . enlightened about crime fiction in a different culture
by gluing its reader to the edge of the confessional couch."—Ray
Browne, former book review editor, Clues
Laura Grimaldi is managing editor for the Italian
publisher, Il Saggiatore. She is internationally regarded for
her work as a writer, critic, and translator. The author of ten
novels, including Monsieur Bovary, Il Sospetto (Suspicion),
La Colpa (Guilt), and La Paura (Fear), her books have
been translated into nine languages. She has also translated
into Italian the work of Ernest Hemingway, E.L. Doctorow, Scott
Turow, and Zadie Smith. Robin Pickering-Iazzi, professor
of Italian and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee,
is the author, editor, and translator of many books.
A press kit is available for Suspicion.
Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)
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September 2003
LC: 2003005651 PQ
256 pp. 5 x 8 1/2
ISBN 978-0-299-18860-3 Cloth $19.95 t
Wisconsin
edition for sale only in the United States and U.S. dependencies,
and in Canada.
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