An atmospheric mystery novel in rain-soaked 1966 Venice

If you like your psychological suspense stories awash in atmosphere, drenched in dread, positively soaked through with sinisterness, “Palace of the Drowned,” by Christine Mangan is for you. The setting is Venice in the fall of 1966, the site of a real-life historic flood in which water levels rose over six feet - a consequence of high tides combined with three days of heavy rain and a sirocco wind that wouldn’t quit. (Such catastrophic flooding now ascribed to climate change - occurred in Venice once again in 2019.)

Electricity, phone and gas lines shut down, the first floors of residences were underwater, and the city was isolated for a time from the outside world. In mystery fiction, this kind of extreme weather situation is what’s known as “the dark and stormy night” gambit.

As she did in her 2018 bestselling debut novel, “Tangerine” (set to be a film starring Scarlett Johansson), Mangan focuses her narrative on a slow-building, intense relationship between two women. Frankie (Frances) Croy is a middle-aged British writer who enjoyed a smashing debut years ago, but whose subsequent novels have never matched that early success. In fact, when this story opens, Frankie has retreated to a wealthy friend’s vacant palazzo in Venice to lick her wounds and hunker down to work. Some weeks earlier, a blistering review of Frankie’s most recent novel propelled her into inciting a very public brawl at a London book party. Frankie desperately needed to flee London and salvage her tattered reputation.

As she settles in, however, Frankie becomes increasingly convinced that a mysterious presence also inhabits the supposedly empty palazzo, whose inauspicious Italian name translates into English as “Palace of the

Drowned.” Since she knows no one in Venice, Frankie’s paranoia thickens like the shadows in the corners of the palazzo’s dusty rooms.

One day, though, as she’s walking near the Grand Canal, Frankie’s uneasy solitude in the foreign city is suddenly broken when a hand reaches out of the crowd and grabs her wrist. That hand belongs to a young woman, also British, who claims to be an acquaintance. Frankie is uncertain. Here’s a sliver of that momentous first meeting:

“I knew it was you,” the girl cried, pulling her close, into something that would have resembled a hug, had Frankie’s body yielded to the movement. “Oh, God, it’s been ages, but I knew it was you.”

“Do we know one another?” Frankie asked, stepping back.”

“The girl’s hands flew to her face and she laughed. “Oh, goodness, you don’t remember . ... ”

“You’re not Diane’s daughter?” Frankie inquired, the vision of a schoolgirl dragged in to meet her vivid in her mind . ... ”

“The girl’s face brightened. “You do remember! Oh, I’m so pleased.”

“Yes,” Frankie replied, allowing a tight smile. In her memory the girl had been blonde - but perhaps she was wrong.”