David Downie Discusses “Red Riviera” with Don George
A discussion about Italy, globetrotting, and crime from two of travel writing's greatest minds.
Its jaws open wide, a firefighting seaplane skims the glittering Gulf of Portofino on Italy’s jagged Ligurian coast, scooping up seawater, unlucky anchovies and a lone swimmer named Joe Gary. The superrich, retired Italian-American spook has mob connections and a dirty political past. Has he been snatched by accident or murdered?
Red Riviera is Commissioner Daria Vinci’s first investigation, a wild roller-coaster ride from the tangled trails of the Cinque Terre to glamorous Portofino and roughneck, roistering Genoa. It’s a Riviera made red by riotous bougainvillea—and the blood spilling from bags stuffed with butchered bodies.
Half-American, Daria Vinci is an outsider, the unlikely rising star of Genoa’s secretive Special Operations Directorate DIGOS. In Red Riviera, she must face down a Fascist police chief and fanatical coup-plotter, the CIA’s creepy local mastermind, a former World War Two Spitfire fighter pilot, and a plucky hundred-year-old marquise whose memory is as long as it is vengeful. If you like Aurelio Zen, Aimee Leduc, and Inspector Brunetti, you won’t be able to put down this captivating first adventure of Commissioner Daria Vinci.
“On the Road, Columbia, South Carolina, Spring 1959” A Poem by Reuben Jackson
“There’s much said in what’s not said in Reuben Jackson’s poetry. His cleverly sparse style often convincingly veils the complexities of which he writes, just until the poet sharply corrects our deception.” Linda Stiles
Those deceptions Ms. Stiles refers to above often come from Reuben’s use of the child’s point of view. As a child, the narrator, and reader by proxy, is looking up at the absurdity of adult interests and actions with a renewed curiosity. The narrator misses the cut of the barber’s words when asked “aren’t you proud of being negro?” The narrator cannot reason why the neon lights of the roadside motel are fading in the rear-view window, and yet his father seemed once so confident…
New Poem by Reuben Jackson, “Radio Nights”
Radio Nights by Reuben Jackson ASP is proud to premier the new Reuben Jackson poem, “Radio Nights.” From Reuben: As I mentioned during the interview with Rose Solari, my childhood […]
Reuben Jackson Reads his Poem “Second Grade”
Reuben Jackson Reads “Second Grade” “Reuben Jackson’s poems are gateways to possible worlds. With the finesse of a real sleight-of-hand artist, he transforms the truly personal—hopes, dreams, desires—into universal memories.” Richard […]