Italian ham

Martin Booth's A Very Private Gentleman was disappointing because it's filled with Authentic Italian Detail. Readers love that sort of thing but to me it renders the authorial voice fussy and uptight. The novel ostensibly concerns a man who makes rifles for assassins but is mostly chatter about prosciutto and muscato and Dante and... oh, fuck, it goes on. The effect is like Tim Gunn doing The Day of The Jackal. It even features a homage / shot by shot copy of the famous "adjusting the sights" target sequence from the 1973 movie. 270pp but the story starts around p.145, or you can wait for the movie, which sounds very post-Bourne.

I love a good thriller and can name about five: the rest are so much dreck. Why (as my late friend Paul Reynolds was fond of saying) should the devil have all the best tunes? I started Hennel Mankell before abandoning it and it's why I've yet to attempt Stieg Larsson. I don't deny readers their fun but it frustrates me to read a book that would come to life if the authors would only shut up.

On page 244 of A Very Private Gentlemen the protagonist orders a grapefruit juice: 'Una spremuta.' Apparently this is risky in Italy because the word sounds similar to the slang for 'blow job.' I learned this from the adventure of an art historian who while travelling in Florence decided to order a grapefruit juice very loudly in a busy street cafe. The waiter's eyebrow went up and the patrons fell silent just long enough for the realisation of what he'd said to sink in, and then everyone exploded.