Camilla Trinchieri

Camilla Trinchieri worked for many years dubbing films in Rome with directors including Federico Fellini, Pietro Germi, Franco Rossi, Lina Wertmüller and Luchino Visconti. She immigrated to the US in 1980 and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Under the pseudonym Camilla Crespi, she has published eight mysteries. As Camilla Trinchieri, she has published The Price of Silence and Seeking Alice, a fictionalized account of her mother’s life in Europe during WWII.

Trinchieri's new novel isMurder in Pitigliano, the fifth title in her Tuscan mystery series.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

I am presently engrossed in two very different novels: The Searcher by the Irish writer Tana French and Jumping the Queue by the deceased English author Mary Wesley.

In The Searcher, Cal Hooper, a retired and divorced American police officer has bought a ramshackle house in a small Irish town. When a young boy asks for his help finding his brother, Cal, at first reluctant, accepts the challenge. French’s depiction of Cal is so well done I want to follow him as he gets in deeper and deeper. Through her incredible talent French brings the setting and the inhabitants so alive I felt I was hearing the rooks, feeling the wind in the trees and smelling the beer. That is so very hard to do.

I had heard of Mary Wesley but bought this book because I was intrigued by the title. Jumping the queue (British for line) is considered very bad manners and I was curious to know what that might represent. In the case of practical Matilda and the man she encounters on a wharf, it’s very bad manners to interrupt a suicide by wanting to kill yourself first. This meeting of two unhappy people starts a wonderfully humorous relationship. Back to the cleared out house they both go, the goose of course comes back to the animal’s great relief and I can’t wait to know more. Down to earth Matilda is someone I immediately wanted to meet in person. Wesley writes with great heart and humor. That too is so very hard to do.

I try to bring my readers to the small Tuscan town where widower Nico Doyle, like Cal, an American retired detective, has made his home. I hope they will find themselves with him, taste the food and the wine, enjoy the beauty of the patchwork of vineyards that brave the land of Chianti. I try.

Visit Camilla Trinchieri's website.

Q&A with Camilla Trinchieri.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Pitigliano.

--Marshal Zeringue