Review: The Namesake by Conor Fitzgerald

The Namesake is the third book in the Commisario Alec Blume mystery series. You may recall that I read the fourth book before this one and didn't particularly enjoy it... I'm happy to say that the third one was much better for me.

Set in Italy, this book focused on organized crime, but in a... familial way, I suppose. Rather than being police officers vs. criminals per se, it's more intent on the little give and take that come with the way the government and the organization-government interact, and the internals of the crime world at the family level. I'm not sure I'm explaining it well, and goodness knows I have no idea if there's any accuracy to it at all, but I enjoyed reading it.

The author's writing is great, by the by. It's the little things, for me: noting the frogs and salamanders poking their heads up in the water by the swamp, or describing the character putting on his wrinkled clothes and lying flat on the bed to "iron" them. Neither was relevant to the story, of course, but it's world building and it's lovely.

Incidentally, I've given some thought about this series. I think in general, I want a mystery series to have three core things: Good writing, good characters and a good mystery. This series has two of those - the writing is excellent and the mystery is interesting, but the characters are flat in an odd way. Like the author so wanted them to be "clever but flawed" that it makes them unbelievable and unsympathetic. It doesn't matter so much when the book is about the mystery, but it was awful when the book was about the main character.