Pentimento Mori by Valeria Corciolani – Review

Valeria Corciolani is an illustrator, teacher and one of the most prominent mystery writers in Italy today. Despite the fact that her novels are popular, well-reviewed and have been adapted into films in her native country only her latest novel, Pentimento Mori, has been translated and published in English.

In addition to this startling first, Pentimento Mori is also the first in a new series of mystery novels to feature renowned art historian Dr Edna Silvera. Silvera inadvertantly finds herself playing detective when she discovers a potentially priceless medieval painting in a junk shop whose proprietor has been recently murdered. Becoming a thorn in the side of a public prosecutor and a target of some very dangerous people, Silvera must solve an art mystery to truly understand the price of murder.

I’m delighted that Kazabo publishing have finally translated Valeria Corciolani’s assured, playful and absorbing writing into English. She brings her intricate knowledge and first-class scholarship to produce an art mystery which is as delightfully engaging as it is deliciously fiendish, and I hope that many more Dr Edna Silvera mysteries will be published in the future.