I went too far perhaps by giving similarity to two “Ladies of detective stories”, because one wrote sixty-six novels and fourteen collections between Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot and precisely because of this worry of finishing two books in a year, they sometimes made her a little stylistically sloppy, but there were others like her!
Maria Masella instead she took all the time she needed, by God, doing other things too, but starting well with the saga of Commissioner Mariani.
This is our commissioner’s first case and the book has the title Death at home (Fratelli Frilli publishers, 2012).
Tall, charming, but not handsome, unfaithful man, despite being married to a beautiful and intelligent woman. Who drinks too much coffee and smokes too many cigarettes. With a mother who is always against him, because for her justice is something else. Then his mother and daughter-in-law know well how unfaithful he is and therefore he takes the title of “questurino”. From both of them.
Meanwhile, the first case is already a messy one from the start. Commissioner Mariani goes to the home of Gina Gualtieri, a prostitute found dead with a plastic bag and a Halloween wig in her hand.
They knock on the neighbors’ doors to find out what they heard, but at least those closest to Gualtieri’s house remain cold, saying that they were only saying good morning and good evening, but then they talk about the nephew who lives with them, because his parents died in a car accident.
As soon as the inspector says he has a daughter, the door opens completely and he is accompanied to sit down for a coffee – and then it turns out that they know something.
That life isn’t easy for anyone, Nando’s grandmother admits, even our grandson was involved in drugs for a while, but now he works and is clean. Gina didn’t make any noise, never an argument with a customer, respectable people.
Then we meet Inspector Anselmi, staid, more of an office man than a street man, who is fifteen years older than Mariani, so he allows himself to tell him that he drinks too much coffee and that Gina’s sister is waiting for him outside. A woman resigned to marital oppression, so she could only hear Gina when her husband wasn’t there; but her sister told her, you are a slave at home because you don’t earn money, while I will stop when I can buy a shop.
It’s damn difficult for the writer not to say too much; but for fear of a spoiler, I don’t really know how to deal with detective stories. Mrs. Gina’s finger was broken, perhaps out of cruelty or for a specific plan.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Mariani returns home, not knowing if he will find anyone. Often his daughter Manu stays with her grandmother, and Francesca could still be at work. She works as an engineer and earns more than him.
The discussions that are becoming “toxic” are about the infidelities of the husband, who is aware of having a tall, cultured and refined woman at home, but tiring, problematic. He needs women for one night, who leave no mark. One thing that can be said is that there is a flower in the middle and that the commissioner’s wife will enter the investigation first out of curiosity, then we’ll see.
The use of dialogue in Maria Masella’s detective stories is an essential stylistic feature, because we are still in a city like Genoa, not too quiet but not a megalopolis either. And then her books are fascinating because they give even the worst criminal, generally speaking, the “right to reply”.
