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.
Waiting for Maxwell’s Demon
Waiting for Maxwell’s Demon by Elizabeth Hazen My father is a geophysicist. As a child, I spent many hours on road trips to remote quarries where we would hike to […]
Finding Myth
Finding Myth By Rose Solari As a child, I distrusted mythology, as I did any literature that adults seemed to think was especially well-suited to kids. Tales of Mount Olympus, […]
[Joanna Biggar] Report from the West Coast
Report from the West Coast: ASP’s Joanna Biggar Talks Paris, Then and Now March 28, 2018 The San Francisco Bay Area Group met March 10th for a timely presentation […]