Mitchell Rose and the Bologna Massacre a Noir Crime Thriller by Mark A. Hill Book Tour with Guest Post and Giveaway

 

MITCHELL ROSE AND THE BOLOGNA MASSACRE

Mark A. Hill

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GENRE:  Crime/Thriller

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BLURB:

Mitchell Rose and the Bologna Massacre is a crime story that explores the last fifty years of cross-fertilisation between the Italian criminal underworld, its secret services, politics and the judicial system.

When Mitchell Rose is called to Milan by Remo Rhimare, a local judge who wants him to investigate the

Bologna bombing of 1980, he knows it would make more sense to turn the job down.

To make things even more complicated, Rhimare also wants Rose to rein in his errant daughter, who is becoming

increasingly wayward.

As Rose begins to investigate, the two missions surprisingly become one, culminating in a dreadful dramatic climax.

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EXCERPT

I twitched nervously. The will to move out of there and toward the action was strong. I wanted to be an integral part of the scene that I could see reflected there in the mobile phone. Alessandra raised a hand and made a gesture that encouraged me to stay put. In doing so, she touched me softly on the left shoulder with her long fingernails. Being discovered there would put me back to square one. Robuyuki was gonna get his from Cambio’s guards, but I had to stay still, I couldn’t move.

“It’s also my favourite drink.” The chef offered.

“But you don’t drink, Robuyuki.”

Robuyuki lifted the glass to his lips and forced the drink down his neck, licking his lips with satisfaction. 

Cambio had been silenced and we heard the clumped, mechanical tramping of feet as they exited the restaurant. Alessandra heaved a sigh of relief and we slowly moved apart. I poured a glass of Grand Marnier into the glass that I had seized and we shared it there in the cellar. The sense of relief was overwhelming and we hugged each other, but without the intensity that there had been between us moments before. There was still a layer of fear that lay like a film across the room, and that fear had rendered us sexless siblings. Robuyuki knocked on the cellar door and we climbed back up and thanked him sincerely.

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Topic: Exploring Mitchell Rose and the Bologna Massacre

You’re going to get three eras/answers for the price of one!

The actual Bologna Massacre took place in 1980. Eighty-five people were killed and over two hundred

injured. The book is loosely based on Italy’s most serious terrorist attack. Several members of the

neo-fascist terrorist organization Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR, Armed Revolutionary Nuclei) were

subsequently sentenced for the bombing. In 2019, I was working in Bologna teaching English to a group

of judges and ex-judges. They gave me some material, which became the nascent seeds of this novel.

The book was completed that year and is set in 2025. When it went back to its final edit, we decided to

put it here in the present. Notwithstanding the present-day setting, the feeling and atmosphere is

distinctly 1950s/1960s. This is a theme that has been underlined in several reviews, which have been

published online.

In 2019, while I was starting the novel, I was cleaning out my father in law’s house after his death.

I came across a series of pamphlets/magazines that were printed in the 1950s/1960s. They were detective

stories of the era set in the USA. To break the work up a little I started skim-reading, rather than putting

things in boxes. I guess I am easily distracted when doing real work, less so when I am writing.

Something about the style called me back to my childhood and watching the black and white detective

films that we were brought up with in the 70s and 80s. I remember my mother sitting me down on a

Saturday afternoon and making me watch Humphrey Bogart. My private investigator is stylized, cryptic,

pushing a door open with a gun in his hand, nudging forward. To some extent, it’s a childhood image

that stayed with me and got reproduced here. In fact, the book cover presents this precisely. My

publishing house and cover designer were able to interpret the mood and setting perfectly. Nonetheless,

if I may, the book is even better than its cover!

Within this genre, I have always enjoyed reading Chandler and Simenon and I must confess that on

finishing I was a little worried that I had copied their style too closely. I think there is definitely

something of theirs in this novel, but perhaps I’m aping more the era than the writer. As I said, I picked

through the Chandler novels, afraid that I was going to discover that I had subconsciously lifted whole

sections, but luckily that wasn’t the case. I dug out a couple of phrases that I had used in real life and

reiterated in the book, but thankfully my self-plagiarism was the sum of my sins.

Turning to a geographical reasoning, I set the book in Italy because I have lived here for thirty-three years

I know Milan and I have worked in Bologna. The book is divided between these two locations. They are

places that I can recount and places where I have sat in restaurants and bars and watched the world go by.

Milan is often called Italy’s only European city, a description that I like as it implies that all other Italian

cities are uniquely Italian, while Milan is not. Of course, every part of Italy is unique in its language,

food and drink, as well as having its own way of fitting into the world. Strangely enough, though, there

are themes that unite and bring Italy together.

These themes are carried throughout the book. Corruption, health, conspiracy, perfection, and a type of

matrixed confusion run deep in Italian society. I also draw on the coffee aroma, the attention to style,

the obligatory aperitif, the way these things are combined and woven together.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Mark is a novelist, poet, translator and English teacher. He has lived in Cagliari, Italy for 33 years.   

His poetry has been published in The UK Poetry Library’s Top Writers of 2012 and the Live Canon 2013 Prize

Anthology. In 2016, one of his poems was commissioned, published and performed at The Victoria and Albert

Museum, London, for the anniversary of  hakespeare’s death. In 2024, he was published by Pierian press,

Dreichmag, Cerasus press and Southlight 36 edition. In 2025, he has been published in the Penumbra Journal of

Literature, Rituals, Art at California State University Stanislaus, Book of Matches and And Other Poems. 

He is the winner of the Azerate poetry prize and his debut poetry collection, “Death and the Insatiable” was

published in September 2025. https://hiddenhandbooks.com/azerate-poetry-prize His first novel “Mitchell Rose and The Bologna Massacre” was published by Wallace Publishing in July 2025.  

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mark.hill.3192

Twitter: https://x.com/MarkAHill172207

Web https://www.wallacepublishing.co.uk/mark-a-hill.html

Amazon UK:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mitchell-Rose-Bologna-Massacre-Mark/dp/B0FCMWCW9M/ref=sr_1_1

Amazon USA:

https://www.amazon.com/Mitchell-Rose-Bologna-Massacre-Mark-ebook/dp/B0FC8NBRLW/ref=sr_1_1

Amazon De:

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Mitchell-Rose-Bologna-Massacre-Mark/dp/B0FCMWCW9M/ref=sr_1_11

Amazon It:

https://www.amazon.it/Mitchell-Rose-Bologna-Massacre-Mark/dp/B0FCMWCW9M

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GIVEAWAY

Mark A. Hill will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

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