Luchino Visconti. She immigrated to the US in 1980 and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Under the pseudonym Camilla Crespi, she has published eight mysteries. As Camilla Trinchieri, she has published The Price of Silence and Seeking Alice, a fictionalized account of her mother’s life in Europe during WWII.
Trinchieri applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Murder in Pitigliano, the fifth title in her Tuscan mystery series, and reported the following:
Celia, a red-haired little girl from Pitigliano, a medieval town on the southern border of Tuscany, discovers Nico is a detective and asks him to help her runaway father, who has been accused of murdering his business partner.Visit Camilla Trinchieri's website.
Page 69 takes place in the restaurant Sotto Il Fico (Under the Fig Tree) where Nico Doyle has become sous chef during the tourist season. It is now November. Nico and his rescue OneWag are eating pappardelle in veal stew sauce with his deceased wife’s cousin Tilde, her husband and her cantankerous mother-in-law, Elvira. Nico has decided to help Celia and her mother discover the truth. Never having been to Pitigliano, he asks for information. Elvira, after her usual criticism of Tilde’s cooking takes her time to answer him. She tells the story of a long-gone woman, a red-headed owner of a knit shop, whose pretty red-headed daughter ran away, not to be heard of since except for a postcard she sent from Pitigliano. Nico wonders if there is a connection to Celia and her mother. Redheads are not that common in Tuscany.
The page includes elements that are important to the whole series: Nico’s good heart, the joy of cooking and eating food, the important relationship between Nico, Tilde and her family. And it has Nico wondering. I’m glad you chose the 69th page.
Q&A with Camilla Trinchieri.
--Marshal Zeringue
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