The Bar Lume
2 total works
The first installment in the Bar Lume Series.
At the Bar Lume, in a small coastal resort near Livorno, between shots of espresso and hands of cards, four old-timers and Massimo the Barman, wile away the time chatting, arguing, and theorizing about the murder of a young woman in their town. The girl’s body was found in a dumpster bin on the edge of town. The victim’s now notoriously licentious lifestyle has everyone thinking that her death had something to do with the world of drug trafficking and dangerous sex that she inhabited. The prime suspects in the case are two of the girl’s nightlife associates. But out of love of gossip, the group of old friends at the Bar Lume begin to pull the case to pieces, forcing Massimo into the role of amateur sleuth. The four old-timers analyze the crime and the suspects, contextualizing both, and in the process put a comic spin on their often narrow-minded neighbors. From this “investigation,” in Malvadi’s lively and colorful prose, emerges a fascinating picture of life in a small town that, for all its faults, stubbornly resists the devastation of mindless global tourism.
This new novel by Marco Malvaldi marks the return of the investigative quartet nicknamed the “senile squad.” At the Bar Lume, with the exception of the bartender Massimo and his assistant, the beautiful Tiziana, the youngest regular is Aldo, seventy-something owner of the Osteria Boccaccio. The principal, indeed the only activity, in which the septua- and octogenarians engage in is sitting around at the Bar Lume playing cards and analyzing, postulating, gossiping, and chronicling every event that occurs in their small Tuscan town, their talk laced with colorful Tuscan slang and figures of speech. Massimo, all intuition but tending toward inaction, is obliged to investigate a homicide. The old-timers provide a running commentary and play devil’s advocate to any and all theories concerning the perpetrators of the crime in question. Their cunning at three-card monte has taught them how to see past to the truth that lies beneath appearances. A comedy, a beguiling mystery, and a vivacious portrait of small-town Italy all wrapped into one.