Daughter of Ashes

Starred review from October 2, 2023
Tuti’s splendidly constructed fourth adventure for Italian Police Supt. Teresa Battaglia (after 2022’s The Sleeping Nymph) explores the criminal profiler’s past, its impact on her career, and its connection to a current case. Now in her 60s, Teresa is entering the early stages of Alzheimer’s, a fact she has yet to admit to her colleagues. She’s on sick leave, recovering after she and her partner nearly died while pursuing a killer and determining how to handle the onset of her condition, when DA Albert Lona—an old foe—orders her to interview Giacomo Mainardi, a serial killer she brought to justice 27 years earlier. After his recent escape from maximum security prison in northeastern Italy, Mainardi has turned himself in and asked to speak privately with Teresa. He tells her that, during his brief bout of freedom, he fulfilled a request to kill a man, but he will not reveal who hired him, who the victim was, or where the body is buried. Teresa’s efforts to fill in the missing pieces of Mainardi’s confession are interspersed with flashbacks to the pair’s initial cat-and-mouse game decades earlier, allowing Tuti to add depth and drama to Teresa’s characterization without sacrificing thrills. The result is a standout entry in a superior series.

November 1, 2023
Hard-used Italian police Supt. Teresa Battaglia, returning to duty following her latest round of traumatic injuries, encounters some old enemies who just won't let go. The most obvious of these is Giacomo Mainardi, a serial killer imprisoned for 27 years, who broke out of prison two weeks ago but turned himself in to the police because he feared for his life and thought prison would be safer than the world outside. A more improbable foe with a different approach but no more scruples is wily District Attorney Albert Lona, who doesn't want Teresa to think bygones are bygones between them just because he rescued her from a fire that could have killed them both. Her most insidious enemy is her dementia, which has gone from creeping to leaping forward in ways that make it impossible to conceal. As Teresa struggles to reopen the 27-year-old case of Mainardi's murders and his theft of selected bones from each of his victims, dramatized in a series of flashbacks to the days when she was waiting for the results of her superintendent's exam and hoping that she and the baby she was carrying could survive the violent abuse of her husband, psychiatrist Sebastiano Battaglia, everyone around her, from supportive Inspector Massimo Marini to longtime medical examiner Dr. Antonio Parri, recognizes that she has some uncanny bond with Giacomo Mainardi, who's done something truly dreadful with the body parts he's stolen. Linking the superintendent together with the criminal, and both of them with the fourth-century Christian community of Aquileia, is the heaviest lift of Tuti's ambitious novel. A monumental tale that broaches just about every mystery you can imagine except for the question of whodunit.

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Starred review from November 1, 2023
Northern Italian police superintendent Teresa Battaglia's third outing is the best yet of this well-crafted procedural series (last visited in The Sleeping Nymph, 2020). Despite her insistence on retirement and the exhausting efforts to conceal her worsening Alzheimer's, Teresa finds herself leading a new investigation with life-altering personal revelations. Giacomo Mainardi, a serial killer whom Teresa put in prison almost thirty years ago, contacts Teresa to tell her that he was the intended target of his cellmate's recent murder. Teresa is shocked when he also reveals information about an old crime: an unnamed person with apparent government connections hired Giacomo to kill his final and most high-profile victim. In the ruins of an early Christian temple, Teresa finds Giacomo's trademark bone mosaic alongside a grisly clue revealing Teresa's personal ties to the murder. An unrealized connection between Teresa and Giacomo is laid bare, and Teresa is forced to return to the case that made her career and doomed her life's most intimate relationship. In a compelling development, Teresa's emotional walls erode as she recognizes the loyalty of her team, and series fans will find reassurance that, despite her insistence on retiring, a fortuitous twist leaves doors open for future installments. Great for fans of Meagan Jennett's You Know Her (2023).

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.