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Property of Blood 2 reviews
Magdalen Nabb
Arrow Books Ltd, 2005
Nabb: A Storyteller with Style, Insight and EQ
Magdalen Nabb's detective (The Marshall) is based in Florence and nobody captures the dark side of that brilliantly lit town better than Nabb. "Property of Blood" represents a change for Nabb in that great chunks of this book are written as if in the first person, by a woman who has been kidnapped. I couldn't help but ponder whether Nabb herself had spent time with victims of this all too common ...
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The Enchanted Horse 6 reviews
Magdalen Nabb
Collins Audio, 1994
A gem of a story
This book was just a guess; I picked it up at the book fair with no expectations a few years ago. It turned out to be a beautiful, involving book that enthralled me. I still remember it fondly and always will as a glowing story of Christmas.
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Some Bitter Taste 4 reviews
Magdalen Nabb
Thorndike Press, 2003
The Marshall Guarnaccia literate mysteries are a joy
I recommend that readers with the same goals as lvkleydorff (see review below) follow his advice and avoid the literate, beautifully written complexities of Ms. Nabb's Marshall in her all too brief series. Our hero plods, rather than walks, understands rather than articulates, and is convinced that he is barely useful to his superiors. He is actually does the detecting, while others are managing ...
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Josie Smith1 review
Magdalen Nabb
Harpercollins Pub Ltd, 2000
Wonderful character & series
My family loved the Josie Smith books, and have read as many of them as we could get. We read them when my son was 6 and my daughter was 4, before tackling the Ramona books. They are charming and very funny. My kids got to know that when I read "...closing her eyes..." they should say :"...because it was a lie."! They related to Josie's loving but sometimes strict mum, and to the harmless ...
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The Marshal and the Madwoman 4 reviews
Magdalen Nabb
Scribners, 1988
Marshal Guarnaccia and other people's little problems
The best time to murder someone in Italy is during its brief but sweltering summer, when all the sensible people have left for the coast. Those who are left, like Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia of the Florence Carabinieri, keep to the margins of life - the shady side of the street and the edges of the day. It would be easy to dismiss the suicide of a neighborhood "crazy" as just another sad ...
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The Marshal Makes His Report1 review
Magdalen Nabb
Arrow Books Ltd, 2004
The Marshal is a Genius
The suspicious-looking suicide of the husband of the Marchesa of one of Florence's oldest families has the Marshal once again refusing to accept the easy answer. He insists on looking for the truth, knowing it could well be the end of his career should he find it. The Marshal has a couple of things going for him. First, nobody is threatened by him--nobody believes he's got a brain in his head. ...
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The Marshal and the Murderer1 review
Magdalen Nabb
Soho Crime, 2002
The potters Tale
SoHo continue to delight by re-issuing Nabb's superlative Florentine novels ( although why they aren't being put out in chronological order defeats me ). The story revolves around Guarnaccia's gradual unravelling of a decades old feud and it's tragic echo in the present. As ever with Ms. Nabb the story is told with wit and compassion , there are no car chases ( there is a bus ride in the rain ), ...
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Death of a Dutchman2 reviews
Magdalen Nabb
ARROW (RAND), 2005
Excellent Italian police procedural
In an apartment next door to his own flat in Piazza Santo Spirito, Florentine carabinieri Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia finds his jeweler neighbor dying in what looks like a suicide due to his slashed hands. However, Salvatore listening to the Dutchman's last words and becomes confused when he whispers "It wasn't her". Besides wondering who is her, Salvatore knows there is not slightest evidence ...
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Vita Nuova5 reviews
Magdalen Nabb
William Heinemann, 2008
strong Italian police procedural
Just above Florence in her bedroom someone shoots and kills twenty-five years Daniela Paoletti. The victim is connected as the oldest daughter of an affluent Florentine nightclub owner. Marshal Guarnaccia puts aside his personal concern of life after the military to investigate the shooting homicide of the single mom PH.D candidate.
Guarnaccia quickly realizes there is no apparent motive for ...
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Death of an Englishman4 reviews
Magdalen Nabb
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1981
Forza Firenze
The re-release of Magdalene Nabb's Florentine stories is long overdue ( and shame on her UK publisher for dropping her ). Congratulations are due to SoHo Press for their continuing ressucitation of some of the finest crime writers ( Van Der Wetterring , Tokagi and Janes etc )who all seem to have been dropped in favour of half-witted serial killer clones. These are some of the finest crime stories ...
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The Bay Psalm Book Murder - Death of a Dutchman - Footnote to Murder (Detective Book Club)
Will Harriss, Magdalen Nabb, ..., 1983
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50 Schritte zum besseren Ged�¤chtnis. Namen und
Magdalen Nabb
Moses Kinderbuchverlag Gm, 2003
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The Marshal at the Villa Torrini 2 reviews
Magdalen Nabb
Soho Crime, 2009
An Italian Maigret
Very much in the spirit of Simenon's Maigret series, Magdalen Nabb's Marshal Guarnaccia mysteries are equal parts procedural insight, portrait of society, and character study. Nabb captures the spirit of real police work, especially when complicated by the politics and bureaucracy that dominate present-day Italy. She also presents Florence in all its beauty and tawdriness, as seen through the ...
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Cadavre d'automne
Magdalen Nabb, Jean-Noël Chatain
10/18, 2002
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Alta moda.
Magdalen Nabb
Diogenes, 1999
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The Innocent 2 reviews
Magdalen Nabb
Five Star Publications (AZ), 2006
Nabb's Marshall Guarnaccia & Florence are both GREAT!
Magdalen Nabb's 13th Marshal Guarnaccia novel THE INNOCENT is the latest episode in her venerable crime series that has been going strong for over two decades. Her two leading characters are her persistent carabinieri NCO, Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia, and her beloved adopted city, Florence.
The story begins with the discovery of a women's body in an out-of-the-way pool in the Boboli Gardens, ...
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The Marshal's Own Case 1 review
Magdalen Nabb
Penguin (Non-Classics), 1991
A dreary, sordid tale
I've read all of Nabb's books, and like the way she weaves details about Florence and its citizens into her murder stories. However, this book is a dreary trudge. There's a gruesome murder of a transsexual, but the way she describes the demi-monde of transsexual prostitutes leaves you with the idea that droves of Florentine young men are going to Spain to undergo sex changes just so they can be ...
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Death in Springtime1 review
Magdalen Nabb
Fontana Press, 1984
Simenon without the bite
I picked up this book because all the blurbs on the jacket compared Nabb's writing to Simenon, who I adore. The comparison is a fair one-- we have the ordinary European detective and the relentlessly pedestrian situations, but something of the bite and wit that Simenon brings to every novel is missing and without that edge, the book only seems a bit bland.
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Death in Autumn2 reviews
Magdalen Nabb
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1985
Another great Nabb
Nabb cannot be beat for descriptions of Florence. The city comes alive as the Marshall quietly and intelligently solves the mystery. What mystery? Read it and see!
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Monster of Florence1 review
Magdalen Nabb
ARROW (RAND), 2005
Degradation Redefined
Though "Monster" is a careful analysis of a series of yet unsolved serial murders of young lovers, a lovers' lane pathology, the principals in this story defy all the perameters defining the depths of human degradation. If you don't mind feeling the need for a shower after every chapter, read the book. Any author would have a tough time keeping the repulse factor in acceptable doses.
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