Valerio Varesi Books In Order

Publication Order of Commissario Soneri Books

Valerio Varesi
Valerio Varesi has been the Parma correspondent for La Repubblica and La Stampa.

His “Commissario Soneri” series of thrillers has been adapted into one of Italy’s most popular TV dramas. Two novels in the series have been shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger and were bestsellers in their original Italian.

“River of Shadows” is the first novel in the “Commissario Soneri Mystery” series and was released in 2010. Introducing Commissario Soneri in this visceral, brooding, and packed with tension and atmosphere.

One relentless deluge lashes the Po Valley, and the river itself starts to swell beyond all limits. This barge breaks free of its moorings and it drifts erratically downstream, and once it finally runs aground its seasoned pilot isn’t anywhere to be found. The next day, this elderly man of the exact same surname falls out of the window of a hospital closeby.

Commissario Soneri, who’s scornful of his superiors’ skepticism, is certain that these two incidents are connected. He is stonewalled by the bargemen that make their living along the riverbank, and scours the floodplain for some clues. While the waters start to ebb, the river yields its secrets: stories of past brutality, revenge, and bitter rivalry.

This novel reeks with the watery and damp mists of Italy’s longest river, and the writing is fine, never growing trite, formulaic, or reaching for comic caricature. Valerio crafts this hero to be less than heroic yet more than just a cipher. He’s got a melancholic side to him, nostalgic and sensitive to the currents and eddies of this great river flowing through the novel like some malevolent pike, with sharp teeth and keen appetite.

“The Dark Valley” is the second novel in the “Commissario Soneri Mystery” series and was released in 2012. Autumn has arrived in Parma. Soneri decides to escape from the city and return back to his home village in the Appenines for a much needed vacation. He plans on spending this time hunting for some mushrooms on the wooded slopes of Montelupo. The remote and tiny village revolves around the fortunes of the Rodolfi family, who have been salami manufacturers for generations now.

The gifted Palmiro, its patriarch, runs quite the tight ship, however behind the scenes, all isn’t well: since his son, named Paride, has got some other plans for his future. And then all of a sudden the family finds that it is in the throes of a financial scandal, with some worrying implications for the whole community.

Shortly afterwards, this hiker finds a decomposing body in the woods. Soneri, after some initial protestations, quickly gives up all hopes of having a peaceful break. The complicated relationship that he reveals between Rodolfi and his son gets much more pertinent once he discovers that his own dad and Palmiro Rodolfi used to be friends.

“Gold, Frankencense and Dust” is the third novel in the “Commissario Soneri Mystery” series and was released in 2013. Parma. This multiple pile-up occurs on the autostrada heading into the city. This truck transporting some cattle skids right off the road. Dozens of bulls and cows go on a rampage, crazed and injured. In this chaos, a young woman’s burned body is discovered at the side of the road. Her death doesn’t have any apparent connection to this carnage.

Soneri gets assigned to this case. It’s a welcome distraction for him, since Angela (his lover) has decided she wants to pursue other options, which leaves him even more morose than usual.

The dead woman is eventually identified as a Romanian immigrant named Nina Iliescu, whose beauty had enchanted a series of wealthy lovers. Angel, temptress, and muse. She was all things to men. Her murder is concealing a sacrilege and crime. Even in death she has got a surprise just waiting for Soneri.

“A Woman Much Missed” is the fourth novel in the “Commissario Soneri Mystery” series and was released in 2016. Italy’s Maigret returns in another smoldering noir from a master of the police procedural. Just a few days before Christmas, as Parma is gripped by fog and frost, Ghitta Tagliavini, who is the elderly owner of this guesthouse in the old town center, is discovered murdered in her apartment.

Soneri is assigned to the case, however the investigation holds quite a personal and painful element which sends waves of nostalgia sweeping right through him. Tagliavini’s guesthouse is where Soneri met Ada, his late wife, and where the young couple spent some unforgettable hours in one another’s company.

However the present can embitter even the sweetest of memories. This old picture of Ada with some other man sends him into a spiral of despondency, ever more so once he realizes that her death could be connected to Tagliavini’s lucrative sideline as a backstreet faith healer and abortionist.

Even though Soneri would like nothing more than to be allowed to just drop this case, he doggedly persists, finally uncovering, along with the truth behind Tagliavini’s death, rife corruption at Parma’s rotten core and this raft of ghosts from Italy’s own divisive past.

“The Lizard Strategy” is the fifth novel in the “Commissario Soneri Mystery” series and was released in 2018. Parma has been blanketed in snow, however even this white and pristine veneer is unable to mask the stench of corruption. Its officials no longer work for its people, just for themselves, and crime is now out of control and resentment is festering in every single district.

Soneri is an idealist at heart, so Parma’s state wounds him more than your average person. Now he gets presented with three mysteries at once, each one of which is more impenetrable than the last one.

In this river creek right on the outskirts of the city, having been tipped off by a local, he finds this cell phone which rings through the night yet has no data. This elderly patient with senile dementia gets reported as missing from hospice care. The mayor of Parma, who had been reported taking a vacation out on the ski slopes, has just vanished right off the face of the Earth, and right when he appeared certain to get implicated in this seismic corruption scandal at city hall.