Vita Nuova (Marshal Guarnaccia Series #14) Book

This author is new to me and when I finished the novel and looked eagerly to find others, I discovered that there are at least 13, but that sadly she had died in 2007. The book reminded me very much of Donna Leon's fiction; not just because they each have a middle aged honest middle ranking police officer as their hero and are set in a major Italian city, in Nabb's case Florence, but because of their humanity and their exploration of character and understanding of human frailty.
Investigating an apparently straightforward death, Guarnaccia realises that he has acquired knowledge of corruption at the highest level and that exposing it will bring disaster on himself and his family. This occurs when his wife and children are away from home and he is behaving with all the classic "deserted husband of long standing" patterns - ignoring the meals in the freezer in favour of take-away rubbish, flying into a fury with washing machines and air conditioning units and being angry with his much loved wife on the telephone. After a sleepless night he decides his only option is to send a report to the General Command of the Carabinieri and to submit his resignation. The scene where his commanding officer persuades him to trust him with this information and to withdraw the resignation is genuinely touching. The trust proves deserved and those responsible for the death are identified, but the reader is left sharing Guarnaccia's uneasy feeling that those really responsible have not been punished.