The Girl From Venice

Fisherman In Love 

Martin Cruz Smith’s 1981 crime novel Gorky Park, set in the erstwhile Soviet Union is a thriller classic. Subsequently he wrote several books with the same central character, an incorruptible investigator, Arkady Renko.

His new standalone book, The Girl From Venice, is set in 1945 Venice, amidst a lot of crime an subterfuge. But at the centre of all the World War II mayhem is a tender love story between a fisherman, Cenzo and a young Jewish girl, Giulia, he vows to protect from marauding Nazis.

Evert since Cenzo’s lookalike brother Giorgio ran off with his wife, he has become a loner. He lives away from his family in a tiny shack and paints when he is not fishing. One day he finds the corpse of a girl floating in the lagoon, and pulls her out. Turns out the girl is not dead, and is being hunted by the Nazis because she escaped while her family was butchered. 

Smith describes with empathy, life in the Venetian backwaters in the village of Pellestrina, where ordinary folk, who just want to get on with their lives, are under attack from the Germans, the fascists and the partisans fighting a guerilla war. It is a time when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini capitulated to the Nazis and set up in the  northern Italian town of Salo, the headquarters of his puppet state. The victorious Allied Forces are on their way to liberate Italy from the Germans, but in the in-between state of flux, the Nazis are even more vicious in defeat.

Giorgio, who has become a movie star and fascist spokesman, keeps flying down to Pellestrina in his two-seater Stork airplane and rubbing Cenzo’s nose in the dirt out of spite. Cenzo ends up killing a Nazi officer to save Giulia, and manages to hide her from the many people looking for her by dressing her as a boy and teaching her to fish. He sends her off to Salo with a friend, and then is lured there himself by Giorgio, who wants him to find the girl again.  Cenzo has, of course, fallen in love with Giulia, though admitting to himself that his passion is hopeless—why would the rich, educated girl want to spend her life in a village with a fisherman?

Salo has some of the novel’s most interesting bits, as the town’s rich live lavishly and try to pretend everything’s alright. Maria Paz, the wife of the Argentinian consul becomes the axis around whom the characters revolve, and even she has a shameful secret. In the meantime, Mussolini is amassing wealth to escape Salo, and the wartime rumour mills speculate about who he will take with him—his wife or his mistress.

Cenzo’s plight is palpable, as he skirts around danger from many quarters to look for Giulia. It is a beautifully written book, with well-developed characters, a thread of suspense running through it, and an utterly sympathetic hero, who always does the right thing.

The Girl From Venice

By Martin Cruz Smith

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 308