A woman sits at a vanity, brushing her hair and preparing for bed. A knock at the door. An intruder. Death. More than murder — the killer cuts open his victim's chest and rips out her heart. She is the first, he warns. There will be others.
REVIEW: "The Light in the Ruins," by Chris Bohjalian
FICTION: When a woman is murdered in 1955 Florence, investigators set out to find out why.
By CURT SCHLEIER
July 7, 2013 at 7:55PM
Yes, over the first few pages, "The Light in the Ruins" has all the characteristics of a potboiler, a grisly whodunit. But as is always the case with a Chris Bohjalian novel, there is nothing typical about it. This is his first mystery — previous books have been about everything from homeopathic medicine to the transgendered — and he brings to it the subtlety and language of the literary novelist he is.
It is 1955 and the setting is Florence. The victim was Francesca Rosati, daughter-in-law of a marchese in Tuscany. Francesca already had her share of pain: the death of her husband and two young children at the hands of the Nazis a dozen years earlier. Why this, too?
It's a question that must be answered by Detective Serafina Bettini, the only woman in Florence's small homicide squad. When Beatrice Rosati, the marchesa, meets a similarly brutal fate, it becomes clear that this was not a random act of violence. Someone has a grudge against the family.
The action shifts back and forth in time, from 1943 to 1955. The Rosatis were local royalty. Their estate, called Villa Chimera, boasted livestock, a vineyard and an olive grove. It also had a small Etruscan necropolis that attracted Nazis anxious to loot its art.
The family was powerless to resist, as the Nazis pillaged not only artworks but also food. "What have I done?" the family patriarch, Antonio asks. His failure to more actively resist filled him with "a deep, visceral current of self-loathing."
What made it worse, the Rosati daughter, Christine, fell in love with a Nazi officer.
As we learn more about the Rosatis, we also uncover layers about the detective investigating the case. Serafina was a partisan in Tuscany in 1943; she was badly disfigured and almost killed in a firefight, but has no clear memory of what happened to her — at first.
Tension builds as the killer prepares to strike again — even planning to kill the wife and children of the Rosatis' one surviving son.
The denouement is dead solid perfect. Bohjalian has written another winner.
Curt Schleier is a freelance book critic in New Jersey.
