a man’s blessing

A Man’s Blessing by Leonardo Sciasca (Harper & Row, 1968)

An odd, short novel about a murder in Sicily sometime in the 1960s.  Two men, a pharmacist and a doctor, are killed while out hunting in the countryside; the pharmacist had recently received a threatening anonymous letter that turns out to be a fake, a decoy.  The professor, a decent, single man, takes an interest in solving the crime and his investigation, which leads him to the murderer (the doctor’s wife’s lover) also leads to his murder.  The slight story is told with elegance and economy but gets a bit bogged down with Italian politics.  I liked the character of the professor, and enjoyed reading the book.