The Light in the Ruins – by Chris Bohjalian copyright 2013

This is a lovely mystery, well written and more than a story. The author describes the setting south of Florence so well that we get a travelogue with our mystery. Bohjalian gives us a story about World War II, about the Italian citizens, noble and not, about the Germans, loving and not, about people trying to survive and what they will do to survive when war comes to their homes. And then, years later, the awful punishment – murder – that is a result of their survival acts. Payback, if you will, but the reader does not know this until the very end.

The book moves back and forth between the war, 1943, and the Florence of 1955, with its first female detective. A delightful stylistic component is the killer\\\'s viewpoint. Why is he (or she) killing the people in the Rosati family who have survived the war? Haven\\\'t they gone through enough? There is a backstory with the female detective, Bettini. She has a history with this family that is being killed and she can not remember how she knows them (or is it that she knows OF them and really does not know then at all?). There are a couple of red herrings near the end but I did not mind them as I normally would because the book is so well written, so descriptive. I enjoyed it all the way to the awful end.