{"id":6890,"date":"2017-11-13T07:18:26","date_gmt":"2017-11-13T12:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6890"},"modified":"2017-11-13T07:18:26","modified_gmt":"2017-11-13T12:18:26","slug":"beneath-the-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6890","title":{"rendered":"*****Beneath the Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bletterbach,<\/a>

The Bletterbach – photo: Esther Westerveld<\/p><\/div>\n

By Luca D\u2019Andrea, translated by Howard Curtis \u2013 When a debut thriller appears that sold to thirty countries within a month, became a bestseller in the author\u2019s home country of Italy and in Germany, and was greeted with breathless praise like \u201ccan be compared (with no fear of hyperbole) to Stephen King and Jo Nesb\u00f8,\u201d you know you\u2019re in for quite a ride.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Andrea delivers.\u00a0Beneath the Mountain<\/a> is set in the northern Italian province of South Tyrol, in the village of Siebenhoch, whose Italian residents speak German. Siebenhoch is near the end of the eight-kilometer Bletterbach gorge in the jagged Dolomite mountains. Hikers are warned they enter the steep terrain \u201cat their own risk,\u201d because of rockfalls, mudslides, freezing water, and flash floods. The geological characteristics and history of the gorge are essential to D\u2019Andrea\u2019s story, anchoring it to a reality that could not have existed anywhere else.<\/p>\n

Thirty years before the novel begins, three experienced hikers\u2014Kurt, Evi, and Marcus\u2014trekked deep into the gorge and were set upon first by an unusually powerful storm, then by one or more unknown assailants who hacked their bodies into pieces. By the time a four-man rescue team arrived, any forensic evidence was washed away or lost in the mud.<\/p>\n

The deaths of these three young people reverberated through the community, affecting, disastrously, not only the men who found them but also their families. One time or another suspicion has fallen on a disappeared paleontologist with some bizarre theories that Evi thoroughly discredited, on a wealthy developer who built a visitor center on land her analyses had shown was unstable, on various members of the insular community, even on the rescuers themselves.<\/p>\n

Now, American screenwriter Jeremiah Salinger, his wife Annelise, and their five-year-old daughter Clara have relocated to Siebenhoch. The fresh location inspires a new television series about the work of Dolomite Mountain Rescue. As its name implies, the rescue service comes to the aid of stranded tourists, injured hikers, and others in distress among the precipitous peaks. Jeremiah is party to a disastrous helicopter crash that kills four rescuers and a tourist, but his physical injuries are nothing compared to a serious case of PTSD, compounded by guilt and fear, that impairs his judgment. The booze doesn\u2019t help. To distract himself, he starts investigating the 1985 Bletterbach murders, a deeper, more dangerous rabbit hole than the one he\u2019s already in.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Andrea frequently introduces new information through the device of a community member offering to tell Jeremiah a story, which is a powerful enticement for the reader as well. Especially engaging is Jeremiah\u2019s relationship with daughter Clara. Their word game\u2014she loves to spell\u2014is a theme throughout, which becomes ironic when, despite his obvious devotion to her, he puts his off-the-books investigation before even her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Luca D\u2019Andrea, translated by Howard Curtis \u2013 When a debut thriller appears that sold to thirty countries within a month, became a bestseller in the author\u2019s home country of Italy and in Germany, and was greeted with breathless praise … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"*****Beneath the Mountain - a remote village, murders from three decades before, does a troubled American dare uncover the truth? International bestseller.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,366,3,126],"tags":[1177,1176,678,73],"class_list":["post-6890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-drama","category-mystery","category-reading-2","tag-italy","tag-luca-dandrea","tag-murder","tag-nature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1N8","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6892,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6890\/revisions\/6892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}