Auntie Poldi has decided to move from Bavaria to Sicily, the home of her late husband, in order to drink herself to death in Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano and translated into English by John Brownjohn. Fate, however, intervenes when Valentino, a handyman who has helped her, goes missing. Searching for him unsuccessfully, Poldi gets a premonition one morning and goes out to the beach next to her house, where she finds Valentino’s body washed up on the shore. He has been shot in the face with a shotgun. Thus, Poldi finds herself wrapped up in a murder case, with incentive to stay alive both from the detection she performs and from the handsome detective who takes official charge of the case.
I found Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions to be of interest but not highly exciting. The plot moved more slowly than I would have liked, and it has too much discussion of sex for my taste. I do appreciate getting to see a heroine who is 60 instead of a young lady. Poldi lives her life how she likes regardless of social conventions, making no secret that she wants an active sex life and describing exactly what she likes. That is where the book gets a little too graphic for my taste.
Matt Addis performs the audio edition of this book. He does a good job of portraying Poldi’s nephew, the narrator of the book to whom she tells her story. Addis makes the book move more quickly than it might otherwise.
Overall, I had mixed feelings about Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions, as the book moves more slowly than I would have liked and has too much discussion of sex for a typical cozy mystery. However, it did have some fun plot points that I enjoyed, so the book was certainly not all bad. I give it three stars.
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