ginny12, your timing couldn't be better! I went to the site you listed and found the PERFECT gift for my in-laws. I found Summer's Lease, a book about a vacationing family who rents a villa in Tuscany for three weeks in the summer, and while there a murder mystery ensues. Minus the murder, the book describes the trip we just took with them in June! I am so thrilled -- thanks for helping score MAJOR points!!!! And now I'm in a little trouble because I've been perusing other books on the site; our trip included Venice and I'm seriously considering Salley Vickers' Miss Garnet's Angel for myself. What fun! GRAZIE!!

Prego, crazydogs, prego. Italy--and reading about it--is definitely addicting.

as Italian I feel compelled to drop my two cents about the few names I know

Carlo Lucarelli, IÂve only read a book by him, and he most a "noir" writer rather than a mistery one

Nicolo Ammaniti "IÂm not scared" (Io non ho paura). I read this years ago by chance, I was late, in
danger to miss my train without anything to read, so I entered a bookshop and picked this one from a
basket. ItÂs really good, riveting and well written; but what is riveting is not the mistery involved; but
how the kid deals with it.

Andrea Camilleri, IÂve never read anything of him , because I canÂt stand the guy. thereÂs no reason,
in Italy we say "I canÂt stand him out of skin" or maybe "ItÂs a matter of skin".
Yet Camilleri is highly appreciate here. His stories are set in Sicily , the main characters is called
Montalbano and is an Italian "commissario" a chief police-man.

Carlo Emilio Gadda is deemed a master in the genre, his novels are set mainly in the foggy Milan

Just out of curiosity, we call these kind of books, "gialli" (yellows) ThatÂs because in the 50Âs books
were only sold in bookshop, at one point Mondadori a pubblish house, thought about to launch a
paperback series in the newspaper kiosks, and they were only : detective stories, police stories and so
on, and all the covers were yellow. They were such a hit that since then everything that is misterious ,
eerie and the like , for us is a "yellow". Nowadays , as far as books are concerned , since the blending
of languages, we no longer , or rarely, call a mistery story a "yellow", we name them, legal-thriller,
police story and so on, but the word "yellow" still remains in our way of saying. For instance, a few
days ago I read in a paper the following headline, " A young woman aged twenty, missing in Genoa.
ItÂs a yellow"
Tv can shows programs titled this way: the yellow cases of Italy; about old murderers or eerie facts
happened in the past. My wife could tell me , I donÂt understand why we are always running out of
coffe-spoons. ItÂs just a yellow.

I profit of this post to wish you all my best for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

grelobe

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and for the interesting info on Italian mysteries as "yellows". In the US, "yellow" journalism--the term is only used for journalism, not literature--is considered to be unreliable sensationalism. The term goes back to the 1800s when such scandal-mongering newspapers were printed on cheap yellow paper.