Description
Never a false note… It is the first time I have seen the theme of kidnapping treated so simply and so plausibly… Bravissimo ! You have more than fulfilled your promise.’ Georges Simenon Snow in March. A thing unheard of in the centre of Florence. Everyone was so distracted by the big wet snowflakes falling slowly in the road that no one noticed what happened right under their noses in the piazza, when two foreign girls were driven away at gunpoint. Marshal Guarnaccia was there, too, but it takes some time before what he saw begins to piece itself together in his mind sufficiently for it to make sense because he is absorbed in a dozen other problems. The newly-qualified sub-lieutenant Bacci does well enough until he is distracted by falling in love, and Captain Maestrangelo, a level-headed man who coolly follows the routine that never fails him normally in such cases, soon finds that nothing is normal about this one. When a body is discovered in a shallow grave and the hunt for a kidnap victim and two villainous Sardinian shepherds turns into a hunt for two fugitives, even the Captain is forced to allow himself to be distracted from routine thinking. The case and its outcome are as weird and unexpected as the capricious spring weather.
