The Puppeteer

Commissario Trotti #2

by Timothy Williams

Northern Italy, 1982: Inspector Piero Trotti is enjoying his breakfast at a café when gunmen drive up and shoot the man sitting at the next table. Was Trotti their intended target? He isn’t sure. The case falls under the jurisdiction of the local Carabinieri, but Trotti decides to make his own inquiries.

The Puppeteer is the follow-up to CWA award-winner Timothy Williams’s dazzling crime fiction debut, Converging Parallels . This tautly written novel brings us to the depths of a corrupt, scheming Italian society in which bank officials, clergymen, masons, lawyers, and, of course, politicians are all suspect of resorting to criminal activity for personal gain. Only the police are presumed trustworthy, and even they are sorely divided by departmental rivalries and jealousies.

Genres: Mystery

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Timothy Williams was born in Walthamstow, England in 1946. He went to Chigwell School, Essex and the Universities of St. Andrews and Manchester. He has taught at various schools and the universities of Poitiers, Bari and Pavia. He now lives and teaches in Guadeloupe.

Reviews

[Desiree · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trotti's vice in this book seems to be sweets instead of the occasional sip of grappa. His wife is living in the US and his daughter is having problems with anorexia. Trotti tries to solve the death of a journalist that is related to a case he worked on many years ago. Maybe I am getting to grow used to the Trotti persona, liked this one better than the first episode in the series.

[Mikee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well-written. Exciting. But terribly convoluted and impossible to follow. I've ordered one more book by Williams, but unless it's a lot better I'm done!

[Tony Fitzpatrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Further police procedural story involving Commissario Trotti - a follow up to "Converging Parallels". This is a murder story involving the Inspector directly, relating back to a crime from the early 1960s. In it Trotti's family are intimately involved as are a wide group of trusted members of Italian society - bankers, journalists, university professors, judges, Freemasons, the police etc. Corruption at the heart of the Italian State in the 1980s is laid bare. The setting is compelling and the characters very believable, however the plot is very convoluted and hard to follow. I struggled to keep up to be honest, and was grateful for the detailed summary in the last few pages. A much less compelling portrait of Italy than from my other favourite Italian Detective story authors. Probably much more accurate however.

[David C Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trotti is a good character and this series is very good both in the details and in the larger theme of post war Italy and its corruptions, including politics. This one links a present day murder to which Trotti was a witness and a 20 year old double murder case in which Trotti was an investigator. It’s not about murder or even money but power. The problem is that both cases are incredibly complicated - throw in the Masons, the mafia, cross dresssers, a bank robbery and it gets even more so - and hard to follow. The torturous complexity is, of course, the condition what the corrupters want to keep Italy.

[Mars Simonsen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Need to reread this, absolutely insane book. So much misogyny and confusion. I picked it up at a library in Denmark, it was one of like five or six books available in English. I had absolutely no idea this was book #2, I was so confused the entire time. There was a weird line about how all women are incestuous and like older men. I read it in the span of two or three hot summer days and hated it intensely, can’t even remember the plot for the life of me (which is why I won’t give it 1 star, maybe that plot was great and i just can’t recall it).

[Mark Rudd · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried this one as well because of the Lake Garda setting. However, I found that there were too many characters to follow while reading it on a kindle. It would probably have been better to have taken a book. The police inspector is probably an italian version of Morse, but I think to get the most out of it you need to understand more of italian police politics than I do.

[June Finnigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hugely atmospheric and gripping

Trotti struggles to make sense of the murder of a man sat beside him outside a bar in Gardesana. His search for answers takes him to Milan and the murky world of drugs and 'lodges'. Very atmospheric.
June Finnigan - Writer