Blog Tour: The Bologna Vendetta – Tom Benjamin

Instead of escaping reality to this fantastic city, this city of phantoms, I was rushing towards it – hard fate awaited me in this soupy shade of a place…

In the oppressive heat of summer in Bologna, English detective Daniel Leicester is reliving his beloved wife Lucia’s final days. Vivid memories have been awakened by the sight of her bicycle, missing since the accident that killed her, ridden by a stranger through the city’s tight medieval streets.

As unfinished business bleeds – quite literally – into the present, the sickening realisation that Lucia’s death wasn’t accidental dawns on Daniel. He embarks on a quest for the truth, and this most personal of crusades leads him to two contrasting worlds: the secretive, ancient realm of freemasonry, and the revolutionary ‘Reclaim Bologna’ activist movement.

What links these two opposing factions? Is there a chance Lucia wasn’t the woman Daniel believed her to be? And will the truth be too painful, or too perilous, to bear?

Tom Benjamin grew up in the suburbs of north London and began his working life as a journalist before becoming a spokesman for Scotland Yard. He later moved into public health, where he developed Britain’s first national campaign against alcohol abuse, Know Your Limits, and led drugs awareness programme FRANK. He now lives in Bologna.

Find Tom on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at tombenjaminsays.

My thoughts: I’ve read a couple of books in this series before so I knew I would enjoy it. In investigating his late wife’s death, Daniel is also filling in some of the gaps in his back story too. We learn why they moved to Italy, and then why they really moved to Italy.

He’s wrapping up the last few investigations before the summer, and heading to the family summer house, or so he thinks. Instead he is being flooded with memories, of Lucia, of his involvement with a rather peculiar aristocrat who was a member of the Masons, but had to flee the city.

After seeing Lucia’s distinctive bicycle, missing since her death, he starts following and investigating a group of local protesters, who are wrecking holiday homes in the city, demanding that the local government house locals not tourists. The police would very much like to speak to these people too.

Daniel discovers a web of connections between his client, the protesters, his former acquaintance and Lucia’s death. It all ends in truly dramatic fashion, and a headache for the police to sort out.

Moving between time lines as Daniel roams the city looking for the bicycle, and hoping to get some answers, his only assistance a reluctant Dolores, and the drones Carlos operates from the comfort of his sunlounger. Bologna in the summer is a hot, sweaty mess, much like Daniel.

This series is really interesting and enjoyable, Daniel is a likeable and wry protagonist, and Englishman in a country he still, despite years living there, doesn’t quite understand.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.