Rapping with the rap sheet

Michael Jacob, who with his wife Daniela de Gregorio is one half of the crimewriter Michael Gregorio, has written up the recent event I did in Perugia for the Rap Sheet.

I finished reading Mike and Daniela's latest, A Visible Darkness, at the weekend.



It's an intensely dark and gripping tale, grotesque, atmospheric, full of candlelit twists and the fetid stench of the past - a bit like picking your way through an old, labarynthine castle. The Prussian amber industry on the Baltic coast, taken over by Napoleon's occupying forces, provides the setting, and as always Mike and Daniela's grasp of the historical situation - and their ability to bring it vividly to life, to imagine it from the inside - is extrememly impressive. This is what it must have been like, you can't help thinking. And a grim and grinding time it was, though beautifully evoked by Mike and Daniela. It's the third in their series featuring the Prussian magistrate, Hanno Stiffeniis. If you haven't discovered the series already, a treat is in store for you. Buy it here or here. Or you can start with the first in the series, Critique of Criminal Reason.