Le furie di Venezia (The furies of Venice)
Fabiano MassimiVenice, 1934.
A new case for Siegfried Sauer: a woman who could turn the tide for Benito Mussolini.
Following The Angel of Munich and The Demons of Berlin, Fabiano Massimi is back with a new historical thriller
Mussolini and Hitler meet for the first time in a San Marco square filled with black shirts, deployed by the Duce to impress his future ally. Among the crowd are former police commissioner Siegfried Sauer and his partner Mutti, who left Germany following the tragic events of Munich and Berlin and became private investigators in Vienna, where they secretly work for the anti-Nazi resistance. It’s in this new capacity that the two arrive in the lagoon city, with the goal to join the antifascist resistance and strike a blow to the diplomatic machine on the move. Their hope is to provoke an incident preventing an Italian and German alliance, which would be a stepping stone towards a new war. As they try to locate the weak link within the German delegation, Sauer and Mutti stumble upon a much bigger mystery: during the night, in the utmost secrecy, Mussolini leaves the palace he’s staying at and boards a motorboat on the Lagoon. The two detectives manage to follow him off the coast of San Clemente, where they see him entering the main building of the island escorted by a man dressed in a white lab coat. An hour later, the Duce is back on the boat to recross the Lagoon and return to his accommodation, visibly upset. How come? Over the following days, Sauer and Mutti decide to investigate the events of that night. They learn about a mysterious woman living in the island’s asylum, called Ida Dalser. Her story is unbelievable: the woman claims to be the first wife (and only heir) of Benito Mussolini…
Who is Ida Dalser, really? Is she a madwoman, a pathological liar? Or is she a woman who has access to information that could cause irreversible damage to the relentless rise to power of the Duce? Sauer and Mutti must find out. And they will soon come to realise how much more there is behind Ida Dalser and her apparent madness. The unthinkable is there.
