{"id":4915,"date":"2015-10-15T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T10:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4915"},"modified":"2015-10-14T22:05:28","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T02:05:28","slug":"the-sudden-disappearance-of-the-worker-bees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4915","title":{"rendered":"***The Sudden Disappearance of the Worker Bees"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"honeybee\"

(photo: James DeMers for Pixabay)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Serge Quadruppani (A Commissario Simona Tavianello Mystery) <\/a>\u2013 On vacation somewhere in the mountainous part of Italy, police Commissario Simona Tavianello and her husband Marco, himself a capo commissario (police chief) encounter the dead body of an engineer for a major\u2014and highly secretive\u2014agricultural research firm. Local activists suspect the victim\u2019s company of contributing to the disappearance of the area\u2019s honeybees, and he\u2019s been shot on the premises of a deserted beekeeper\u2019s shop. While this case ordinarily wouldn\u2019t involve the vacationing couple, it soon emerges that the murder weapon was Simona\u2019s own gun.<\/p>\n

A smarmy television reporter . . . an eccentric local scientist . . . a shady government spy . . . a ruthless industrialist\u2014the full deck of eccentric personalities is here, against the backdrop of a real-life crisis in agriculture and some interesting speculation on the promise (or is it the threat?) of nanotechnology.<\/p>\n

Possibly it\u2019s an artifact of the translation of this mystery, but a time or two I was unclear which of the book\u2019s many characters was under discussion. More puzzling was the author\u2019s habit of having characters openly blurt out a confession, subverting the mystery. Poor Simona (who ordinarily works for the anti-mafia squad) is involved in the case because of her gun, and she\u2019s also in the way, as the local police try to sort things out.<\/p>\n

Her husband is retired and she herself is described as white-haired and a little thick around the middle, yet she still has an eye for the handsome beekeeper that arouses her husband\u2019s jealousy, mostly good-natured. They are old antagonists, locked in a lifelong battle that pleases them both. Their relationship is quite fun for the reader, too.<\/p>\n

Quadruppani has a distinctive, somewhat breathless writing style, moving his characters rapidly from one scene to another, and a facility with description of the Italian countryside and lifestyle. Fans of previous books in this series may have developed a fondness for Simona and Marco. As a first-time reader, I found the pace a little frantic\u2014too reminiscent of a bee flitting from flower to flower, gaining information pollen grain by grain, but still needing some serious processing to produce honey.
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