The Assisi Murders

London: Macmillan London Limited, 1985. BH3 - A first edition (First published 1985) hardcover book in very good condition and a very good dust jacket. Dust jacket and book have some bumped corners, light tanning and shelf wear. Although not marked in any way, this copy comes from the personal collection of Otto Penzler, legendary editor and founder of the Mysterious Press, an award-winning icon in the genre. 8"x5", 190 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Peroni, Neapolitan by birth but nowadays a Commisario of the Venetian police, is bullied by his sister into going on a 'pilgrimage' to Assisi. He lusts after another pilgrim, a pretty young married woman, but she is soon behind bars on a charge of shooting a young man, her lover. Peroni doesn't accept her guilt. For one thing he considers the young woman would have missed her target for certain, had she fired at him. And the man had been shot stone dead. He embarks on an unauthorised quest of his own unknown to the official police force of the region, who are perfectly happy to have solved the murder so quickly and easily when they arrested the young woman. The murdered man had been in a state of high excitement in the last days of his life : this was attributed to a switch of mistresses which led to his death. But Peroni sought a different trail which led him to events in Assisi in 1230 AD, and to the letters of a remarkable woman who had been a personal friend of St Francis himself. It transpires that the complex and convincing skulduggery that took place in 1230 does indeed suggest another motive for the shooting in 1984. A Venetian embassy (among other embassies from elsewhere) had visited Assisi for the interment of St Francis in the great basilica newly built for that purpose. Peroni's researches bring to light some savage happenings and living, breathing characters from the very distant past. He also encounters one or two memorable characters in contemporary Assisi. Timothy Home's previous accounts of Peroni's adventures in The Neapolitan Streak, A Funeral of Gondolas and The Devil and The Dolce Vita have been widely praised. Even greater recognition must come with this elegant and subtle account of a contemporary murder cunningly intertwined with another murder seven centuries earlier.. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.