THE HUNTING SEASON is the second installment in Tom Benjamin’s Daniel Leicester series. Leicester is an English expat living in Bologna, a former journalist now working as a private investigator.
The story opens with the concerned parents of Korean-American Ryan Lee asking for help in locating their son, who never showed up for a scheduled meeting. Lee is a “supertaster” whose extraordinary taste buds are in demand among purveyors of the world’s finest foods to ensure the consistency and authenticity of their products.
He disappeared while on assignment to verify the quality of rare white Boscuri truffles, which are just coming into season in food-obsessed Italy. Though detective Leicester has a deep appreciation for food, he goes into the case knowing little about truffles or the northern Italian region that produces them. He and the reader will soon learn a great deal about both.
Leicester and his assistants put in a tremendous amount of legwork, touring the top restaurants in the ancient city of Bologna, looking for places Lee may have visited in the course of his work. The reader goes along for the ride, getting a private tour of the city that locals inhabit (as opposed to the one that tourists are shepherded through), and the tour, which eventually extends into the truffle-rich hills, is the most satisfying part of the book.
Detective Leicester’s background in journalism helps him both as an investigator and as a narrator. On the investigative side, the journalist, like the seasoned detective, is tenacious in following the slimmest of clues, the tiny loose thread that will unravel the entire fabric if you just keep tugging at it.
On the narrative side, Leicester provides not only rich atmospheric description, but also well-researched social, economic, and historical context. The narrator’s descriptive powers put us inside the churches, bars, restaurants, palaces and cemeteries through which the seemingly hopeless hunt for Lee wends its way. We feel not only the city and its many marvels, but also what shaped it, what made Bologna into what it is today.
The narrator’s descriptions are occasionally witty, as in his first meeting with Count Malduce, who “had that vague yet very definite air of the aristocrat nurtured to view anyone other than their own social equal with the forbearance one might grant someone else’s children.”
Author Benjamin also employs some admirable narrative devices to engage the reader’s own inner sleuth. The missing Ryan Lee occasionally left origami-like jongi jeobgi figures in the restaurants he visited. These turn out to have coded meanings that only one character knows how to interpret. If detective Leicester can just find that character…
The case of the missing supertaster crosses all levels of Italian society, from the aristocracy and wealthy business owners at the top to mistreated immigrants, prostitutes, and street thugs at the bottom. As Leicester follows the trail down through the ranks and then back up, we see and feel the social and economic tensions in present-day Italy.
THE HUNTING SEASON is not a simple whodunnit. It’s not easy to see where the case will lead next, much less where it will end up. The joy of the book lies in its richness of place. If you like to be transported, to be immersed in the sight, sound, and texture of a beautiful city drenched in history, this book is for you.
