Venetian Candidate

Krystyna Green, publishing director of Constable, writes:

Politics are a murky business, and Italian politics doubly so. And in Venice, where so much is at stake – a city brought to its knees by floods and overtourism – an election of a new mayor is big news and of vital importance. Yet all this does not sound like the usual Nathan Sutherland remit, where he helps resolve Anglocentric crimes in La Serenissima while revealing the city to the reader while partaking glasses of prosecco and spritzes and negronis. 

In this latest outing, however, Nathan and city politics collide as the disappearance of an elderly English academic leads him to a commonwealth war cemetery – where he discovers a dark and disturbing link to one of the candidates in the mayoral elections. I so love this series from Philip Gwynne Jones who lives in Venice himself – it’s deft, with a light touch and as always when I finish one of his books, all I want to do find a bar where I can drink Venetian white wine and eat olives and baby octopus on sticks. It’s perfect holiday reading.