Novelist trained as chef in San Pellegrino Terme

Novelist Sandrone Dazieri attended a
catering college in San Pellegrino Terme

Sandrone Dazieri, the best-selling author who celebrates his 53^rd birthday today, has a connection with the Bergamo area.

Before fulfilling his ambition to write fiction – he is the author of more than 12 crime thrillers – Dazieri spent 10 years working as a chef, having trained in San Pellegrino Terme.

The town in Val Brembana has long tradition of educating chefs and hotel management staff, being home to a vocational institute for hotelier and catering services.

Born in Cremona, Dazieri worked in locations all over Italy as he pursued his career in cooking, but as an enthusiastic reader of gialli – the word Italians use to describe crime novels on account of their traditional yellow covers – he had ambitions to write and eventually decided to move to Milan in the hope of finding work in the publishing business or journalism.

After working as a proofreader and writing about his favourite genre fiction for the newspaper Il Manifesto, he had his first success as a novelist with Attenti al Gorilla – Beware of the Gorilla – which introduced readers to a complex character, based on himself and even named Sandrone, with two personalities who solves crimes and tackles injustices.

The book spawned a series featuring the same character that not only gained Dazieri enormous popularity among Italian readers but helped him get work as a screenwriter, especially in the area of TV crime dramas.

He was for several years a contributing writer to the hugely popular Canale 5 series Squadra Antimafia.

Now, for the first time, Dazieri has moved into the English language market with Kill the Father, published by Simon & Schuster in London in January 2017.

Already a top-selling title in Italy, the dark crime thriller received such good reviews in the literary sections of English newspapers and magazines that it made the Sunday Times best-sellers list.

The novel features new characters in Colomba Caselli, the chief of the Rome police’s major crimes unit, and Dante Torre, a man who spent 10 years of his childhood imprisoned by a masked kidnapper and is called in to help Caselli solve a crime with all the hallmarks of the one committed by his own captor.

A second in a planned series featuring the same lead characters, entitled Kill the Angel, is due to be published in English next year.

San Pellegrino Terme is well known as the home of the mineral waters bearing the name of the town.

It was a fashionable spa town in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a favourite haunt with wealthy industrialists from Bergamo.  Some wonderful Liberty-style architecture remains as a legacy, in the shape of the San Pellegrino Thermal Baths, the Municipal Casino and the Grand Hotel.

The Grand Hotel in San Pellegrino Terme opened in
1904 with 250 luxury guest rooms

The resort’s popularity declined somewhat in the mid-20th century.  The Grand Hotel, an extraordinary building of 162 metres (177 yards) in length on the left bank of the Bremba river, rises to seven storeys high and has 250 guest rooms.

Designed by Milanese architect Romolo Squadrelli and opened in 1904, it once boasted a guest register – now preserved in a San Pellegrino library – that included such names as Queen Margherita of Savoy and other members of the Italian royal family, the composer Pietro Mascagni, General Luigi Cadorna, Nobel Prize winners Eugenio Montale and Salvatore Quasimodo, relatives of King Faruk of Egypt, the film director Federico Fellini, opera singer Mario del Monaco and players from the ‘Grande Inter’ team that dominated Italian football in the 1960s.

Sadly, as business fell away, the hotel could not maintain the standards of luxury demanded to keep its five-star status and it closed in 1979.  It is such a magnificent building, however, that it is hoped that individuals or organisations will come forward to restore it.

This has already happened, to a degree with the equally impressive Municipal Casino on the opposite bank from the Grand Hotel and also designed by Squadrelli, which has not operated as a gambling establishment since 1946 but which now hosts cultural and theatrical events, as well as meetings, congresses, wedding receptions, social dinners, gala evenings, fashion shows, corporate conventions and exhibitions.

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Death in the High City first anniversary

Successful year for Bergamo’s first English crime novel

Death in the High City, the first British detective novel to be set in Bergamo, has had an exciting first year.

The novel, which was published in Kindle format on Amazon 12 months ago today, has sold copies in the UK, Italy, America, Australia and Canada. A paperback version of Death in the High City was published in July 2014.

Author Val Culley has had some heart warming emails and messages about the book from readers both in the UK and abroad and has been delighted with the level of interest in her first novel.

With the Colleoni Chapel in the background

In October 2014 Val was a guest at the fifth anniversary celebrations of Bergamo Su e Giù, a group of independent tour guides in the city. She was invited to present Death in the High City to an audience in San Pellegrino Terme and sign copies of the book and she also made an appearance on Bergamo TV to talk about the novel with presenter Teo Mangione.

In November the book was purchased by Leicestershire Libraries and is now in stock at Loughborough, Shepshed, Ashby de la Zouch, Coalville, Castle Donington and Kegworth Libraries and is going out on loan regularly.
In April this year Val was invited to Bergamo again to present her novel to a group of 80 Italian teachers of English and to sign copies. She made a second appearance on Bergamo TV and also formally presented a copy of Death in the High City to the Biblioteca Civica (Civic Library) in Piazza Vecchia, a location that is featured in the novel itself.

Death in the High City centres on the investigation into the death of an English woman who was staying in the Città Alta while writing a biography of the composer Gaetano Donizetti.

On display in a library

The novel is the first of a series to feature the characters of Kate Butler, a freelance journalist, and Steve Bartorelli, a Detective Chief Inspector, who is of partly Italian descent and has just retired from the English police.

The victim had been living in an apartment in Bergamo’s Città Alta and much of the action takes place within the walls of the upper town. The local police do not believe there is enough evidence to open a murder enquiry and so Kate Butler, who is the victim’s cousin, arrives in Bergamo to try to get some answers about her death.

Kate visits many of the places in the city with Donizetti connections and her enquiries even take her out to Lago d’Iseo and into the countryside around San Pellegrino Terme. But after her own life is threatened and there has been another death in the Città Alta, her lover, Steve Bartorelli, joins her to help unravel the mystery and trap the killer. The reader is able to go along for the ride and enjoy Bergamo’s wonderful architecture and scenery while savouring the many descriptions in the novel of local food and wine.

The novel will be of interest to anyone who enjoys the ‘cosy’ crime fiction genre or likes detective novels with an Italian setting.

Death in the High City by Val Culley is available on Amazon.com.

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Celebrating Christmas Bergamo style

With Italian specialities readily available in the shops there is no reason why you can’t recreate a traditional Bergamo Christmas in your own home.

Panettone, Pan d’Oro and Panforte are great alternatives to Christmas pudding and Prosecco is, in my opinion, better than Champagne.

Prosecco, cake and a novel set in Italy

While you may not be able to find authentic Bergamo sausages or meats for your antipasti or not want to go to the trouble of making your own casoncelli alla bergamasca for your primo piatto, you can find good quality prosciutto and salami and stuffed pasta in most shops.

Christmas is very much a family feast in Bergamo, just as in the rest of Italy .

After la Vigilia di Natale (Christmas Eve), when traditionally a fish meal is consumed, Natale (Christmas Day) is a time for feasting.

While the children open their presents, the adults savour a glass of Prosecco as they prepare the festive table.

Friends and relatives who drop in with presents or to exchange good wishes will be offered nuts, biscuits and torrone (nougat from Cremona.)

Antipasti dishes of prosciutto and bresaola are served with preserved mushrooms, olives or pickled vegetables.

Stuffed pasta is usually served as a first course, either in the shape of ravioli or tortellini, which are said to have been offered as Christmas gifts to priests and monks during the 12th century.

For the main course, turkey or capon is likely to be served, with potatoes and vegetables as side dishes.

The traditional end to the meal is almost always Panettone, served warm accompanied by a glass of sparkling wine.

Panettone is said to have been concoted by a Milanese baker, Antonio (Toni), to impress his girlfriend at Christmas time in the 15th century. The result was so successful that ‘Pane de Toni’ has become a regular feature of the Christmas season all over Italy and now abroad.

The feasting and family parties continue on 26 December, the festa di Santo Stefano (Boxing Day).

To transport you back to Bergamo over the festive season, why not read Death in the High City, a crime novel in which much of the action takes place in Bergamo’s Città Alta.

Death in the High City by Val Culley is available from Amazon.com

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Death in the High City

Brand new detective story taking place in Bergamo

A new crime novel set in Bergamo has just been published on Amazon Kindle.

The novel is the first in a series featuring detective duo Kate Butler, a freelance journalist, and Steve Bartorelli, a retired Detective Chief Inspector who is of Italian descent.

Believed to be the first British crime novel to put the spotlight on Bergamo, Death in the High City centres on the investigation into the death of an English woman who was writing a biography of the composer Gaetano Donizetti.

Of interest to anyone who enjoys the cosy crime fiction genre or likes detective novels with an Italian setting, the book is currently available as a Kindle edition, but can also be read on smartphones, tablets and computers using Amazon’s free Kindle app.

The dead woman had been living in an apartment in Bergamo ’s Città Alta and much of the action takes place within the walls of the high city. The local police do not believe there is enough evidence to open a murder inquiry so Kate Butler, who is the victim’s cousin, arrives on the scene to try to get some answers about her cousin’s death.

Kate visits many of the places in Bergamo with Donizetti connections and her enquiries even take her out to Lago d’Iseo. But after her own life is threatened and there has been another death in the Città Alta, her lover, Steve Bartorelli, joins her to help her unravel the mystery and trap the killer. The reader is able to go along for the ride and enjoy Bergamo’s wonderful architecture and scenery while savouring the many descriptions in the novel of local food and wine.

Death in the High City by Val Culley, published in May, 2014, is now available on Amazon.

See Best of Bergamo’s updated Flights Guide

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