Cara Massimina

A Novel

By: Tim Parks

Narrated by: Raphael Corkhill

Morris Duckworth teaches English to the pampered rich of Verona, and Morris is not pleased. Living a meager existence in a squalid apartment, he regards his privileged students with envy and disdain, first wreaking revenge by petty theft and then, like all good criminals, graduating to grander larceny. When one of those students, a beautiful but vapid heiress named Massimina, falls in love with him, Morris can almost smell upward mobility.

However, after the girl's mother - much to his chagrin - unequivocally forbids her from seeing him, he hits upon a perfect scheme: He convinces the besotted girl to run off with him, then sends ransom notes to her family. Following a frightening logic, Morris' subversions become deeper and darker. Soon events are spiraling with eerie momentum into a nightmare of deception and violence.

The first novel in what has become the Duckworth in Verona trilogy, Cara Massimina is a comic thriller that will leave listeners laughing out loud in mortified delight.

©2015 Tim Parks (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

The first Duckworth novel is "better than Silence of the Lambs.... Macabre fun orchestrated with immaculate precision. It's a killer." (Los Angeles Times)

A Wicked Murder Farce

A down and out English teacher in Italy improvises several crimes to enrich himself at the expense of posh Italians, which ultimately leads to murder. It is not a typical murder mystery since we see things through the eyes, and mind, of the protagonist.

Sexually explicit language in many places, but always in keeping with the story which moves along without getting bogged down at all. Some Italian phrases pop up but they are not hard to figure out. I loved this story.