Marco Malvaldi was born in Pisa in 1974. Game for Five is the first in the Bar Lume series, featuring Massimo the Barman and the four elderly sleuths. He is the winner of both the Isola d’Elba Award and the Castiglioncello Prize for his crime novels.
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Marco Malvaldi
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It demands a degree of chutzpah to make the Renaissance’s greatest genius the central character in a novel, but the Italian Marco Malvaldi succeeds in creating a vivid portrait of Leonardo da Vinci in The Measure of a Man (Europa £12.99). Malvaldi is best known in his own...— The Sunday Times, Oct 27 2019![]()
It is 1493. Renaissance Milan is ruled by Ludovico Sforza, known as il Moro. Ten years earlier, Leonardo da Vinci wrote to il Moro, boasting of his engineering prowess and saying that he would build a bronze horse in memory of Ludovico’s father. Six years later, Ludovico entrusted...— European Literature Network, Sep 30 2019![]()
Game for Five, by Marco Malvaldi and translated by Howard Curtis Game for Five was the last book I read in 2015. I read it in the run up to New Year while feeling slightly under the weather from a cold and from the usual Christmas excess. I wanted to lie quietly in a room...— Pechorin’s Journal, Feb 1 2016![]()
Written by Marco Malvaldi, translated by Howard Curtis – Three-Card Monte is the second instalment in the Bar Lume series, (we reviewed Game For Five here) which are bestsellers in the author’s native Italy. Set in a small coastal town in Tuscany, the book once again features...— Oct 21 2014![]()
The second novel in the Bar Lume series, by Marco Malvaldi, Three-Card Monte brings us once more into the life of Pineta, a small town in Tuscany, near Pisa, with the Bar Lume and its often hilarious characters as its focal point. Owned by thirty-seven-year-old Massimo Viviani,...— Aug 3 2014![]()
Passport to Nefarious Deeds Murder and mayhem cross borders as well. This June four indie publishers—Akashic Books, Europa Editions, Melville House, and Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press—are teaming up for a second time to celebrate International...— Apr 15 2014![]()
Mysteries Chronicle: Dead Poets Review by Tom Nolan Marco Malvaldi's "Game for Five" (World Noir, 140 pages, $15), a 2007 work newly translated from Italian, is short, swift, pleasing. Intellectual curiosity is...— Apr 11 2014![]()
“When you start swaying on your legs, when you light another cigarette to kill five more minutes even though your throat is stinging and your mouth is so furred up you feel like you’ve eaten a tarpaulin, and then the others also light cigarettes and linger a while longer...— Apr 10 2014![]()
In this enjoyable series debut, Malvaldi beckons readers into Bar Lume, the terrain of barman Massimo Viviani in the coastal resort town of Pineta near Pisa. The bar is where everything happens, especially gossip, among Massimo and a coterie of arguing, card-playing pensioners.— Mar 31 2014
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