Mystery Monday: Viper!

Our book today is Viper, the latest Giovanni de Maurizio murder mystery from Europa Editions. It’s the sixth installment in the series starring sad, intense young Commissario Ricciardi of the 1930s Naples police force. The sub-title of this one is “No Resurrection for Commissario Ricciardi,” and fans of the series – among which in Boston I was one of the first and most vocal (I praised the first volume, I Will Have Vengeance, back in 2013 and haven’t exactly been shy about pressing it and all subsequent volumes on anybody looking for a first-rate mystery series) – will see at once the special resonance, because Commissario Ricciardi’s world is entirely shaped by a species of resurrection. Here, amidst the lovingly-detailed descriptions of a Naples almost lost to living memory, de Maurizio adds a key detail that’s otherworldly: ever since he was a boy, Ricciardi has been able to see the dead.

Not illusions, and not seances – his own private witness to a series of shocked ghosts caught in their last moments, forever repeating their last thoughts for only Ricciardi to hear. On a random busy street, a little boy with a caved-in chest asks over and over if he can go play outside; across the street from the cafe where they spent countless happy hours, a grieving husband with a gaping hole in his head laments his dead wife; a murdered socialite murmurs “Oh, it’s you” … Ricciardi alone sees and hears these things, and although they’ve sometimes given him the investigatory edge that’s allowed him to rise quickly to his position on the force, they’ve taken their toll on his mental state, which can be seen even at the beginning of this latest novel Viper, set in the early springtime when the bleak, insinuating Naples winter has finally relented – a fact that only Ricciardi could find ominous:

Ricciardi didn’t trust the spring. There was nothing worse than the mild breeze, than the scent of pine needles or salt water that blew down from the Capodimonte or up from the harbor, than the apartment windows opening. After a winter of silence, of icy streets swept by winds out of the north, of chilbains and of cold rain, people’s brooding passions have built up so much of that destructive energy that they can hardly wait to erupt, to sow chaos.

(“Welcome to springtime, thought Ricciardi. Nothing is more dangerous than all this apparent innocence.”)

As the novel opens, Ricciardi, two officers, and his trusted right-hand man Brigadier Raffaele Maione are making their way to Il Paradiso, Naples’ most infamous brothel, where they’ve had a report of a murder. The dead woman is Maria Rosaria Cennamo, a fabled courtesan known by the name Viper, and once our heroes have arrived and gleaned the basics, Maione knows exactly how to proceed: the Commissario must be allowed to enter the scene of the crime alone and stay there uninterrupted for as long as he needs (Maione doesn’t know the specifics of Ricciardi’s dark gift, but he knows his boss isn’t like other men, and he’s fiercely loyal – and endearingly protective – on that account). We follow Ricciardi into the dead woman’s room, and despite how many times he’s done it now, de Maurizio still effortlessly manages to capture the silent creepiness of that first encounter:

Ricciardi followed the victim’s blank gaze, the direction of her eyes in the moment of extremity. He heaved a long sigh.

Before a mirror that didn’t reflect it, the woman’s image: standing, arms at her side, short dark hair framing her face; lips stretched in one last breath, black tongue lolling out.

Looking at its own corpse, the image kept saying: Little whip, little whip. My little whip.

Naturally, the case soon encompasses a long list of Viper’s heartbroken former customers, any one of whom might have had personal motive to smother her to death. Because the final utterances of the dead are always cryptic, neither Ricciardi nor the series can simply rely on them to solve the crime and uncover the guilty; de Maurizio layers an expertly-done police procedural on top of his opening element of the bizarre. These books are exactly the kind of electrically smart and enjoyable murder mysteries that make you want to press them into the hands of genre fans. Europa is owed a vote of thanks for continuing to bring this series to English-language readers!