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billkilpatrick
Nov-20-2010, 5:35pm
i finished "punish the dead" - the second novel in michael tedesco's "correggere" trilogy" - just before dinner last night and spent an hour or so stomping around the kitchen in the warm glow of righteousness, retribution and revenge; the triumph of good over evil ... the bad guys getting theirs in the cleverest, most imaginative and thoroughly damnable manner possible - too bad it's fiction.

with a few oblique, tantalizing references to his first novel in the trilogy - "a mandolin of gold" - tedesco follows the life of a 2nd generation italian/american artist as he grows into manhood, discovers his vocation - the mysterious circumstances of his family - and then gradually pieces together the evidence of a cruel and vicious crime, committed many years before. the discovery of this crime, his awareness of all those relating to it - both alive and dead - and the just desserts he subsequently serves to all is the mainstay of the book.

it's an intelligent, well written, completely compelling story. the only false note i detected in any of the characters was put there on purpose, as you will see. it's dark, foreboding - not a little horrifying - and a tremendously satisfying read.