“Vanina” changes just like us: the new novel by Cristina Cassar Scalia

It is an «investigative camurrìa» that presents itself to Giovanna, “Vanina”, Guarrasi, deputy commissioner of the Flying Squad of Catania, in «Le Terme dell’Indirizzo» (Einaudi), the last chapter of the successful series born from the pen of Cristina Cassar Scalia, writer and doctor from Neto, whose “creature” has become a familiar presence for the public, also thanks to a successful television series. A Vanina, much loved – immediately at the top of the charts – who grows on herself, novel after novel, because the characters evolve, and sometimes this evolution is slow, or represents an important turning point in their lives.

As happens to Vanina, who experiences changes: Cassar Scalia had already announced it last year on the occasion of the publication of «Amandorla amara» (Einaudi): «There will be developments – the writer had said – as there have been in all the books with her, because this is what happens to all of us, living. Vanina is in a particular moment in her life, in which everything is called into question a bit. And in any case his story will continue.”

And Vanina’s story, in fact, continues with a positive twist: the prosecutor Paolo Malfitano, “after 5 years, after a nice ride, is still with her”, to live together “a miraculous, rediscovered idyll” which prevents “evil thoughts from manifesting themselves”.

The summer is coming to an end, it is a beautiful Sunday in August, not too hot, and Vanina is in Santo Stefano on the slopes of Etna, relaxing in the rustic house that she has rented from Bettina, a precious neighbor who after two years, since she became vice-chief of the Mobile of Catania, continues to shower her with kindnesses. Next to her are Paolo and also commissioner Biagio, “Gino”, Patanè, who spent peaceful days in another house in Bettina with his wife Angelina, recovering after heart surgery. But the pleasant idyll is interrupted by the phone call from chief inspector Carmelo Spanò: there has been a crime in the ruins of the Terme dell’Indirizzo, an imperial-age complex in the center of Catania, where the semi-charred corpse of a homeless man was found, who had been shot in the head.

A crime, which Cassar Scalia, as always in her novels, puts in the foreground. And so, once the rest is over, we return to work with a Vanina who appears more confident in her life plans, although worried about the problems of some dear friends, but comforted by an increasingly close-knit team. And with the daily habits that comfort her, dispelling her ghosts, the Gauloises, her friends, the films of yesteryear, the typical delicacies she doesn’t give up (irises and ravioli from Catania and a tribute to the chops from Messina, but also pasta with tenerumi from Palermo for the vegan policewoman Marta Bonazzoli).

And then there is the increasingly close bond with the eighty-year-old former commissioner Patanè, “a cop whose fine head walks exactly like Vanina’s” (in the television series this character, so important in the emotional world of the protagonist, has the face of the Messina actor Maurizio Marchetti), in harmony with each other even in their language, which pleasantly lingers on certain stylistic features of the dialect, specific to the series and which enrich the language.

Therefore, a “camurrìa of investigation” which with its dark sides gives the story the necessary tension to allow this adventure to have an unexpected turn (“travelling into the past of the victims was a specialty in which Vanina and Patanè were masters”), because behind that homeless man called “‘u dottari” there is a painful story and another mystery with a feminicide on which the “braining” of Vanina, who never likes to stop at the first hypotheses, will make her open her mind to solution.

Cristina Cassar Scalia will be in Messina today to present the new novel to the public in the Aula Magna of the Rectorate, at 6pm, in dialogue with the Rector of the University Giovanna Spatari.