Blood Rain in Trieste by George Henry made me think of Casblanca and Humphrey Bogart. I wonder…did Bogie ever visit Trieste, Italy?
MY REVIEW
Sounds like shades of Casablanca and Bogie made a trip to Trieste, Italy and ran into Hawaii Five-O.
Milo Marchetta is a musician, a club owner…in walks a dame, only this one wants to hire him to commit a murder.
Mobsters, hookers, money laundering, murder and bullies. What more could you ask for? Small men acting big. Walking a line between life and death. The characters are not prim and proper. I love flawed characters, but these characters are past flawed. They are desperate, twisted individuals, the dregs of humanity.
Milo has a big mouth and a penchant for putting his foot in it, or should I say someone else’s foot. Flawed…he is twisted, broken. As he gets his ass and a bunch of other things kicked…I can’t help but laugh. Even when he tries to do something good it craps on him. He’s so friggin’ damaged I don’t know how he’s still alive.
Forbidden love…the ultimate price…death.
There is so much going on, double cross, triple cross, revenge, betrayal, murder…don’t look away. You might miss something.
This was heavy, slow reading for me. It felt like work, like I was studying for school. Normally, this would be right up my alley, so I wonder, was I having an off day? You’ll need to judge for yourself.
3 Stars
GOODREADS BLURB
Milo Marchetti, a musician and club owner in Trieste, Italy, smells trouble when an exotic woman who resembles his dead wife entices him into arranging a murder for her. Despite his reservations, she answers his cash-flow problem—and he desires her too. Soon their budding romance is strained to its limits as her duplicity thrusts him into a maelstrom of violence: someone wants her kidnapped or dead and the reasons appear as many as the suspects. Is it her brother who has threatened to kill Milo and is bizarrely obsessed with her? Is it the ex-Christian zealot, Milica, Milo’s possessive lover? What about Paolo Mazzola, scion of a crime gang, who wants revenge on her family? Or is it the Islamist extremist who Milo wants to kill for his own revenge? Drawn into a dangerous affair and dreaming of power, will Milo commit murder for her? When shocking truths about the woman rock their volatile romance, Milo faces a choice: a deceitful lover and power or abandon her to the horrible fate of a living hell and return to his old life as a musician? Or is another shock in store for Milo?
I like your comparison. LOL Sounds like this one didn’t work for you, Sherry. Great cover for it.
Yeah, I can’t say a specific reason, but I couldn’t stop reading.
Bummer, reading feeling like work is never fun 🙁
It still wouldn’t let me go, though. I had to know the ending. lol