“This book is many things: a gripping murder story, an ancestral journey, a tender yet funny reflection on motherhood and love of country, family, and food. But mostly it’s just a total page turner. Helene Stapinski is incapable of delivering a dull moment. Bravissima to her and to this fine work!” - Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects Of Discussion
“This book is many things: a gripping murder story, an ancestral journey, a tender yet funny reflection on motherhood and love of country, family, and food. But mostly it’s just a total page turner. Helene Stapinski is incapable of delivering a dull moment.” - Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects Of Discussion
“Entertaining…part memoir, part murder mystery…Stapinski retells her decadelong search for the truth about the early life of her great-great grandmother Vita.” - Publishers Weekly
“Murder in Matera is a remarkable family saga that captures the beauty and grit of southern Italy. The powerful and complicated matriarch at the center of Stapinski’s tale will stay with you long after you finish the book.” - Gay Talese, author of Unto the Sons and The Voyeur’s Motel
“An enticing page-turner . . . a rollicking, magical tale.” - Kirkus Reviews
“Stapinski first grippingly wrote about her family of crime in Five-Finger Discount, and here her search for the truth about a family matriarch—who may or may not have been a murderer—takes her from Jersey City to the Paleolithic town of Matera in southern Italy. Meticulously researched and evocative, Murder in Matera is a powerful story of identity and destiny—and it’s honestly, beautifully told.” - Mark Rotella, author of Amore: The Story of Italian American Song and Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria
“A thrilling detective story. . . . Stapinski pursues the study of her family’s criminal genealogy with unexpected emotional results.” - Library Journal
“Lively...engrossing. In addition to solving the murder, Stapinski produces a vivid picture of the region’s hardships, past and present.” - New Yorker
“Meticulously researched and evocative, Murder in Matera is a powerful story of identity and destiny—and it’s honestly, beautifully told.” - Mark Rotella, author of Amore: The Story of Italian American Song and Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria
“Stapinski’s research reveals a tragic, twisty history” - Booklist
“Filled with short, gritty sentences and portentous one-line paragraphs…if the style of Murder in Matera is streetwise Hemmingway, the theme is Falkner in a nutshell: “You could run, but the past would catch you soon enough and kick you in the ass when you weren’t looking” Stapinski captures perfectly the “simultaneous beauty and sadness” of Matera… its brutalizing poverty and superstition… Food leads to family, family leads to motherhood…In a virtuoso passage, she connects stolen pears to Genesis, Wallace Stevens, Homer, Lizzie Borden, and the Harry & David Catalog.” - New York Times Book Review
“The style is streetwise Hemingway, the theme is Faulkner in a nutshell.” - New York Times Book Review
“A murder mystery, a model of investigative reporting, a celebration of the fierce bonds that hold families together through tragedies…Stapinski artfully teases out the suspense and the often shocking revelations that she shares here, fearlessly, about her family’s cherished and most troubling myths…Murder in Matera is a gem.” - San Francisco Chronicle
“Fascinating and informative . . . Stapinski’s description of the near-feudal life in southern Italy in the 19th century is compelling.” - Newsday