In the sweltering heat of a Bologna summer, a murderer plans their piece de resistance…

Only in Bologna reads the headline in the Carlino after a professor of music is apparently murdered leaving the opera. But what looks like an open-and-shut case begins to fall apart when English detective Daniel Leicester is tasked with getting the accused man off, and a trail that begins among Bologna’s close-knit classical music community leads him to suspect there may be a serial killer at large in the oldest university in the world. And as Bologna trembles with aftershocks following a recent earthquake, the city begins to give up her secrets…

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to join the Requiem blog tour

Housekeeping first – Requiem in La Rossa is the third book in The English Detective series by Tom Benjamin. Daniel Leicester is a private investigator working in Bologna and he prevoiusly featured in A Quiet Death in Italy and The Hunting Season. Requiem in La Rossa is my first encounter with Daniel Leicester but I didn’t feel I was struggling to keep up with characters or background events having missed the first two novels. Purists may wish to read the series in order – based on the quality of the third novel I think that would be a very enjoyable experience – but you can absolutely jump straight in with Requiem too.

So to the book. Bologna in the summer. Temperatures are high and the city is being rocked by a series of earth tremors which initially had residents diving for cover but now seem to be more of an irritation than a cause for panic. But for one professor the heat and fears of earthquakes are no longer a concern, he has been killed during an altrication with a young drug user.

The police consider the issue closed. The killer is in custody and there seems no reason to believe there is anything further to investigate, they have their man. But Daniel Leicester is asked to look into the issue. The killer is a former student, a very talented classical musician who spectacularly and unexpectedly failed in his exams and was let go from his studies. Leicester gets the opportunity to speak with the boy and finds his explanation of events is inconclusive but does not indicate the actions of a murderous individual.

Adding some complexity to Leicester’s investigation is the fact there is more than one individual connected to the professor and the classical music scene who has met an unexpected death. Leicester finds the body of a young musician who has hanged herself leaving no message or explanation around why she took her own life. Unfortunately his discovery will get him on the wrong side of the vindictive Commisario Miranda. Their verbal sparring was very much a fun element to the story.

This is a cleverly written, slow-burn thriller. The pacing of the story lends itself well to the opressive summer heat and the time we spend with the characters lets them develop very nicely to ensure I am invested in their lives. Too many books zip along from incident to incident and the cast suffer as a consequence, it’s hard to be upset about the death of a character who we know very little about.

One slightly surprising consequence of reading Requiem in La Rossa was the realisation I know very little about Italy, the Italian language and their police and political structures. I loved discovering more about Bologna through the story (it is wonderfully presented by the author) and I almost felt I was learning as I was reading.

All in this was a very enjoyable read. I welcomed the slower pacing which accompanied this well told tale and the characters shone through.

Requiem in La Rossa is available in paperback, audio and digital format and you can order a copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/requiem-in-la-rossa/tom-benjamin/9781472131645