Mimi's Ghost

The Deadly Mr Duckworth

by Tim Parks

Morris seems unable to get over the loss of his ex-fiance Mimi, but then, he should have thought of that before he held her for ransom and ultimately did away with her. Now, he's newly married and gainfully employed, but can't shake hisdiscontent. Just as he is beginning to adjust to his new life, he visits Mimi's grave, where her charming photograph on the gravestone distinctly winks at him. This does not bode well for his latest scheme (exploiting immigrants for cheap labor), which, of course, leads Morris further into murder and mayhem.

Author Biography: Tim Parks is the author of ten novels and three works of nonfiction: Italian Neighbors, An Italian Education, and Adultery and OtherDiversions, which was published by Arcade. He has been awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Betty Trask Award. His novel Europa was shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize. He lives in Verona, Italy.

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Roman

314 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1995

About the author

Born in Manchester in 1954, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since, raising a family of three children. He has written fourteen novels including Europa (shortlisted for the Booker prize), Destiny, Cleaver, and most recently In Extremis.
During the nineties he wrote two, personal and highly popular accounts of his life in northern Italy, Italian Neighbours and An Italian Education. These were complemented in 2002 by A Season with Verona, a grand overview of Italian life as seen through the passion of football. Other non-fiction works include a history of the Medici bank in 15th century Florence, Medici Money and a memoir on health, illness and meditation, Teach Us to Sit Still. In 2013 Tim published his most recent non-fiction work on Italy, Italian Ways, on and off the rails from Milan to Palermo.
Aside from his own writing, Tim has translated works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Machiavelli and Leopardi; his critical book, Translating Style is considered a classic in its field. He is presently working on a translation of Cesare Pavese's masterpiece, The Moon and the Bonfires.
A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, his many essays are collected in Hell and Back, The Fighter, A Literary Tour of Italy, and Life and Work.
Over the last five years he has been publishing a series of blogs on writing, reading, translation and the like in the New York Review online. These have recently been collected in Where I am Reading From and Pen in Hand.

Reviews

[Batsap · Rating 3 out of 5]

As complex a character as in the previous novel, we start to see Morris break up a little in this one. Instead of the dictaphone messages to his father, he carries on conversations with the deceased Mimi who becomes increasingly real to him as the novel progresses. He held my attention throughout, but the surrounding characters were also as richly drawn as him. Although they were slightly blurred and filtered through Morris's egocentricity. It was fascinating to watch him get out of all the trouble he got himself into.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a while to catch on to the humor, which is placed mostly in the juxtaposition of Morris' inner life and the outer reality around him. He is astonishingly arrogant and self-unaware, and his self-justification becomes annoying at times. His posturing is where the fun comes in. He's really quite a nasty piece of work and if you ever meet anyone like him in real life my best recommendation is to run as fast and as far away as possible. However, Parks' ability to write such a character, from that character's POV is impressive.

[Vi Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd give this a 3.5 star rating. The front cover describes it as Tarantino meets Peter Mayle which is as apt a description as could be imagined. It is in fact the second book in a trilogy and although Parks brings you up to speed it probably would have been better to read Cara Massimina first. However, the exploits of the breathtakingly vain Morris Duckworth are amusing and entertaining.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Morris only gets more despicable, the more you get to know him. A vile little worm!

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The black humour carried more candle-flickers of light than the beautifully-named yet unsatisfying 'Cara Massimina'. It may be my conversion rather than anything dramatically different in tonality. The first in the (so far) trilogy bludgeoned with unwelcome surprise, whereas by book 2, I may simply have been primed to expect its inky iniquity.

As Parks's book pursues, life is full of surprises. Outside the frame of Parks's own invention was the pure coincidence that this is the second book in a row where a Giacomo is murdered. I'm not sure I've ever even come across a Giacomo in print or person, so this echo with Philip Hensher's 'Kitchen Venom' jumped out of the page.

Not that a student of Parks would believe that Fate is anything other than fickle. Morris Duckworth builds into a devious devil saddled with a small-'p' pathetic past, in a story that is a relative page-turner by Parks's standards. Unlike 'The Last Roundup' by Roddy Doyle, this is a trio of books that I am starting to enjoy.

[Seiffine · Rating 1 out of 5]

abgebrochen

[Cheri · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a bit boring through the first half of the book. Overly descriptive at times. It did get more interesting after the first half, Eventually I had to skim past overly descriptive areas. Some may like it. It was just not my type of book. I had trouble understanding some of the language.The last 3rd of the book was the most interesting parts. Thought about putting it down, but hung in until the end.

[Janine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mor-reece is more sympathetic in this novel but that is not saying much. He is still a sorry example of a man who somehow never gets his come-uppance and never really understands the impact of his actions. However his antics are amusing, especially when he is trying to wiggle his way out of the trouble he causes himself.

[Peter Kalnin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Farce Like Arsenic and Old Lace

An unredeemable and unapologetic protagonist commits crimes while living a posh life in Italy. Great fun. A sequel

Note: if you dislike sexual themes, this book is not for you.

[I am rereading all the books in this series and enjoying them even more than the first time. Great fun!]

[Rachel (Sfogs) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm really not sure what to make of this book.
At some points it was boreding and strange, at others I found myself not minding it at all...