What I Happen to Be Reading At the Moment
"A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.”
While not 13 anymore, the desire to read almost anything and everything in order to read for fun and for experience is still around. I'm currently working on my PhD in a physical science, but I love to read and books are one of my non-science hobbies.
Via delle Oche is the final installment of the DeLuca trilogy, we find our protagonist working again in an official police force. It's the vice squad, though, so DeLuca is out investigating violations of the Italian prostitution code. Brothels have to get new girls every 15 days and the transfers have to be supervised by the prisons. The windows of brothels have their street facing windows closed, among other somewhat apparently arbitrary regulations. These details are the results of well researched historical context, and I greatly enjoy the realism that it adds (where else would one find such arbitrary rules?). DuLuca is on the case for investigating an apparent suicide where the dead man is shorter than the distance between the noose and the stool he apparently kicked out from under himself. Things from the beginning don't add up, and the characteristics established over the previous two episodic novellas result in a finely tuned description of a dogged police officer doing his job. Of course, though, DeLuca doing his job makes him run afoul of many a political person who wants to either cover up involvement with the Fascists or to expel their remaining influence. The concluding novella in the DeLuca trilogy plays upon the characterization and historical backdrop of the previous two, providing an excellent conclusion to the series.
