Skip to content

THE MISSING ITALIAN GIRL

Barbara Corrado Pope

In this third historical crime novel from Barbara Pope — part of her critically acclaimed Bernard Martin mystery series featuring the awkward and endearing magistrate -- young immigrant girls are disappearing into the depths of turn-of-the-century Paris.
Pyotr Ivanovich Balenov, a young Russian, and two young women transport a dead man through the narrow streets of a working class neighborhood in northeastern Paris. They throw the body into the canal and the girls flee to the Latin Quarter to hide with one of the Russian’s anarchist “comrades.” They do not realize they, too, are being watched. Their subsequent disappearance and the violent acts that follow will set Clarie Martin, a teacher and mother of a toddler, and her husband, magistrate Bernard Martin (last seen in Pope's Cezanne's Quarry and The Blood of Lorraine, also from Pegasus) on a dangerous quest to rescue them from a vicious killer.
Available products
Book

Published 2013-02-01 by Pegasus

Comments

A fascinating look at the rise of anti-Semitism in France after the arrest of Alfred Dreyfus for treason in 1894. Pope with great skill makes the atmosphere of the times both palpable and tragically prophetic

Fascinating. With a bleak view of humanity similar to Emile Zola’s, this story of tortured love and repressed violence resembles Iain Pears at his darkest.

Pope's third mystery featuring Clarie (The Blood of Lorraine, Cezanne's Quarry) expertly doles out pieces of its complex plot, a picaresque puzzle with satisfying period flavor.

A highly accomplished, compelling novel. Beneath an exquisite veneer of historical detail lurks a thoughtful exploration of religion.

An intriguing, richly drawn historical mystery. Pope handily blends genuine figures and events into her fictional bouillabaisse of art, science and mystery