Billie Walker returns for another case,
beginning in Sydney, 1948.  This former war
correspondent found that jobs were given to men in Australia
at the war’s end. She set about reopening her late
father’s private inquiry office. This time, she learns
of THE ITALIAN SECRET her father kept hidden.
 
Darlene Elliott is a young woman with a controlling, violent husband. She’s
come to Billie for help in getting a divorce. DI Hank Cooper
doesn’t like bullies, but the police can’t do
much without evidence. Billie and her staff are gathering
photos and impressions of the husband. This is just routine
for them, but it doesn’t seem urgent. With matters
settled, Billie decides to book a holiday. She and her
mother, Baroness Ella Von Hooft, and Ella’s lady
companion, Alma McGuire, will board the first cruise ship to
revisit the popular tourist journey to Italy.
 
All this seems to take place quite slowly, with many discussions and sorting of old
office papers. Billie’s determination to see Naples is
based on a letter and a photo in her father’s effects.
Two-thirds of the book passes before she boards the SS
Luxor, but some bad things have happened. She might have
known they would keep happening. The luxury liner from
Sydney to Naples provides some contrasts with post-war life
in Australia. However, the biggest contrast is with the city
of Naples, once stunning, much of it now a bombed shell in
wonderful scenery.
 
The viewpoints of two other women are provided, one
leaving Sydney at the turn of the century to head to Italy
at her family’s insistence, the other enduring the war
years in Naples. The reader can find this confusing at
times, and the threads are pulled together by Billie. A
family drama unites the women, and violence threatens them
all.
 
The Ghosts of Paris was the previous book I read in this vivid,
haunting series by Tara Moss. I found that one emphasised
the war years, and Billie came across as more of a
journalist. In this story, her PI career feels depressingly
the same as modern times, and her vacation is a study in
elegance versus poverty. THE ITALIAN SECRET is a gently
paced historical crime fiction, and if Billie does feel too
modern in her ideas, she has her earnings so she can ignore
everyone telling her to get married, like many other women
on the continents stripped of able-bodied young men by two
World Wars.