The Disappearances of Madalena Grimaldi by Marele Day

Publisher's Synopsis

Claudia Valentines PI returns - gutsy and glamorous as ever...

It is the start of a long, hot summer and Madalena Grimaldi has disappeared. Claudia is hired to find the missing schoolgirl but she's already working on a case - the death of Guy Valentine, her father.

As Claudia searches the streets, looking for the ghost of her derelict father and for the mysterious man who can lead her to Madalena, she finds herself sinking into a world where, for many, rock bottom is only the beginning.

My Review

The title of the 4th Claudia Valentine mystery does a good job of describing a large part of the plot. The Disappearances of Madalena Grimaldi finds Claudia hard at work on a missing person case during one of Sydney's hottest and most brutal summers in living memory. Claudia Valentine is a private investigator living and working in Sydney, Australia. She's tough, quick-witted and independent and has been a very enjoyable protagonist to get to know over the previous 3 books.

The person Claudia is hired to find is a 15 year old schoolgirl named Madalena Grimaldi who, it appears, has run away from home after a disagreement with her father. Not as straightforward as it first sounds, she was staying with some friends in a share house for a while before she disappeared a second time. It's the second disappearance that is cause for concern. Who is she hiding from? What made her run again? Where would she hide? Or was there an even more sinister reason for her to vanish?

From Lugarno in Sydney's south all the way in to Kings Cross in the dingy heart of the city and even under Sydney's streets, Claudia covers an awful lot of territory in her search for Madalena. But she finds her focus distracted by some unexpected news.

The subplot that runs parallel to the main case is an issue that has been present on the periphery of Claudia's thoughts through each of the previous 3 books. The question of what became of her father after he walked out on her and her mother when Claudia was 5 years old has been constantly nagging at her. By all reports he had become one of Sydney's many homeless deros living rough on the streets. Finally, it looks as though she may have a chance at finding out what really became of him.

Set during the Sydney bushfires of January 1994, Marele Day uses the backdrop of a hot, dry city constantly shrouded in smoke and ringed by bushfires to help create the atmosphere of a grim, desolate landscape in which Claudia had to work. Her feelings of desperation during both her personal and professional searches confirm this background very effectively.

Consequently, compared to the earlier books in the series, the mood here is a little more subdued. I had the impression that Claudia was playing for higher stakes, particularly seeing as one half of her investigation was very personal for her. There are still traces of the wry humour that endeared us to her in the earlier books, it's just tinged with a more sober realisation that failure will have a profound emotional effect on her. Through her desperate search we get an even more complete picture of Claudia Valentine, revealing her weaknesses and fears whereas in the past we only really ever encountered her strengths.

This is a typical private investigator story with the usual methods of scouring the streets for clues, discreet surveillance jobs and the over-consumption of alcohol by the protagonist taking place. But then a plunge into some of Sydney's more unsavoury sections plus a flirt with organised crime completes an emotional finale to the book.

It looks very much as though this is the final book of the Claudia Valentine series having been published in 1994 and it certainly ties up a number of loose ends in Claudia's life that had been left dangling in the earlier books. As far as a private investigator story goes, I thought this was a particularly compelling story that had me fully involved from the opening page. But I also found it a bittersweet book to finish with the knowledge that it is likely that there will be no more Claudia Valentine stories to read.