'Under an August Moon'

Author: Robert Busuttil

Publisher: Horizons Publications / 2025

Pages: 422

This being the fifth Lucio Vella book by the same author, we know, by and large, what awaits us - a Malta that is not Malta but Malita and a Gozo that is called Gaulos.

Otherwise, it's all the Malta we know.

Since the book strangely does not include the names of the previous four books, here they are: Murder in St Jude's; September Rain; A Past Unveiled and Death by Virtue.

The previous book in the series (Death by Virtue) discussed and investigated a series of murders that took place in and around St John's (San Giovanni in the book) mainly of priests.

This time the author goes up another step and we begin to believe that Madam President (a newly-appointed one with the name Barbara, a name not a surname) has been seen rushing out of the Marian shrine (Ta' Pinu?) leaving the priest in charge of the church dead on the floor.

Moreover, the sole witness to this scene is none other than the grandmother of Isabella, the newly-appointed secretary to the president, who is also a distant relative of Madam President.

The priest had been strangled to death.

To have all this blandly announced on the evening news would have caused a huge earthquake on the island, something the bishop of this small island was determined to avert at all costs.

The police were brought in to investigate and they were led, naturally, by Lucio Vella and his team, even though Lucio was supposed to be on parental leave.

For them the case was an open and shut case but how would you go up to the President and accuse her of being a murderer?

Besides, where was Madam President? Nobody seemed to know.

After the investigators had been going round in circles an alert was raised: television was reporting from Boschetto on the main island that Madam President had been found lying on the ground, in the presidential palace, apparently drugged.

Apart from anything else, how could she have been there so quickly in Boschetto apparently after killing the priest on the other island?

Then bit by bit the inner complications of the troubled relations at the centre of the story start coming out.

Mainly, there is a man and his troubled sister. The man is Isabella's father. They have stopped speaking to each other.

Much before any of this happened, the man and the priest were very close friends.

Madam President had meanwhile been planning to transform the traditional August Moon Ball into a vast money collection exercise to help the poor and the underprivileged.

And so the story goes on, lurching from one unexpected development to another.

The investigators get tricked and locked up, the past comes back with a vengeance and the culminating scene takes place at Xlendi (sorry, Shilandi) with "the President" acting as a decoy.

That's enough spoilers.