Carolina Invernizio’s The Modern Sinner opens with a crime that will haunt the narrative and its characters beyond the last page. Invernizio creates the aristocratic femme fatale and worldly seductress named Sultana, who plays with men, bewitching them onto paths of dissolution and betrayal. Invernizio’s men are too frail to escape her or too unaware to notice her deviousness. Husbands and lovers become victims and pawns to her charms.
As Sultana’s arch-nemesis, Invernizio invents a vengeance-seeking country girl, Anna Maria, who weaves a dangerous web to entrap her prey — a web dangerous for herself as well as for everyone else involved.
One of the earliest examples of the serialized female crime novel, The Modern Sinner is a masterpiece of the genre. Its twists and turns entrance from chapter to chapter as the reader follows the shifting fates of two women engaged in mortal combat, each one hiding her calculations and objectives.
Translated from the Italian, with an introduction, by Andrew Edwards.
Introduction. 258 pages.
A New Title in Italica's Italian Crime Writers Series
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