Having just completed this novel, which I came across by chance, I reached for information about the author. Timothy Williams, b. 1946, now teaches in Guadeloupe [the scene of his French books featuring Judge Anne Marie Laveaud]. He has also written five books featuring the morose Commissario Piero Trotti between 1982–96, this being the last.
I am an avid reader of the novels of the late Michael Dibdin and Magdalen Nabb [both born just a year after Williams] and Donna Leon, as well as the many books by authors of translated books involving Italian detectives. As I read on enthralled, my wonder grew that I had never come across Williams or this character before.
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