Blood Rain in Trieste

If you like travelling to places like Kandahar, Afghanistan and Trieste, Italy, where the women are exotic and beautiful, sex is fast and furious, and danger lurks around every corner, then you're sure to enjoy Blood Rain in Trieste, a thriller by author, George Henry.

I was given an advance copy to review, and though this is not a genre I typically read, I found myself engrossed because of the writing. What impressed me the most about Henry's style were his cinematic descriptions, humor and clever dialogue. The central character, Milo Marchetti, a guitarist and part owner of a music club, introduces himself to the reader as “I was a killer or a murderer or a patriot, too. The semantics game was a waste of time.”

And Milo isn't the only character who's hard to pin down. The alluring Carla, who looks like a high class hooker, is also not who she seems. She wants Milo to murder someone who's causing her trouble. The musician considers the offer but thinks, “She was as much trouble as a cageful of adolescent monkeys on a pub crawl but I was a sucker for her kind of beautiful simian with a sob story.”

The author's witty dialogue reminded me of speeches I've heard in film noir. How Milo navigates the underbelly of Trieste with its mobsters, prostitutes and high stakes will keep you enthralled to the very end.