Best-selling Italian detective novelist, Carlo Lucarelli's "The Damned Season", translated to English by Michael Reynolds.
The Damned Season refers to the period in 1944 when multiple armed and furious factions fought tooth and nail in Northern Italy, including retreating Nazi's and Allied Forces, for eventual control of the country. Communists, too.
This book is the second in a trilogy which introduces us to Police Commissar Deluca who is trying to get back to Rome, covertly, when captured by a local thug/policeman who remembers Deluca from some training he had once in Rome. He could kill the detective, since there is no law and order. Instead, he forces him to help him solve a local murder in order to take the credit and get promoted.
Being #2 in the trilogy, we don't know where Deluca came from or goes from here; I was attracted to the book by a blurb on the cover that said "this is Alan Furst country". Yes, sort of. Not quite. The edition I read was an uncorrected proof, for advanced readers, found in the "magic paperback exchange" at my local public library.
Alan Furst's novels were the "Best" of 2018 for me--all of them. I have left one unread, which I will read sometime later this year, I hope.
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