Italian mystery stories for learners

What kind of mysteries are they?

At A1 the mystery is usually behind a door. Marco's new flat in Milan is perfect and absurdly cheap, and three days after moving in he tries his key, by mistake, in a door at the back of the corridor:

Further up, the secrets get older. A watchtower in Portovenere lights up for the first time since its keeper vanished in 1994. A pharmacist on a Venetian lagoon island recognises a man declared dead three decades ago. Letters from 1944 surface at a village auction and prove the local legend false. A grandmother's sewing box holds fabric scraps that match neighbourhood thefts from the 1960s.

What Italian does a mystery teach you?

Questions, first of all, and Italian questions are easy to build: keep the word order of a statement, add a question mark and let the voice rise. Chi l'ha scritto? (Who wrote it?) wonders Marco when his lost wallet comes back with extra money and a note. Cosa c'è laggiù? (What is down there?) closes chapter 1 of La Chiave di Via Garibaldi. Learn the question words early: chi, che cosa or cosa, dove, perché, come, quando.

Then there are the clues themselves, which in these stories are usually written down. The second note a widowed bookseller finds tucked inside a returned novel is three short lines:

A handful of words return in nearly every chapter: la busta (envelope), la chiave, il segreto, nascondere (to hide) and sparire (to vanish), whose participle sparito gives you most cliffhangers. Watch il biglietto, which means both a note and a ticket: in Il Segreto di Nonna Assunta, Marco finds a biglietto del treno in his grandmother's name and then a second biglietto with a stranger's name on it.

Which Italian mystery should I read first?

• A1: La Chiave di Via Garibaldi; Le Lettere di Via Garibaldi, in which letters left at a door in Venice lead to a plaque with an archivist's mother's name; or Il Segreto di Nonna Assunta.
• A2: Chi Ha Rapito Micio?, a missing cat and a courtyard full of suspects; Il Segreto tra le Pagine; or La Stanza Segreta, about a Lake Como guesthouse room that is paid for every month and never used.
• B1: La Torre di Portovenere, Il Treno della Notte e il Cammeo Scomparso, or La Farmacista dell'Isola.
• B2: Le Lettere di Casa Bellandi, I Segreti della Scatola di Nonna Rita, or Gli Ultimi Messaggi, in which an app that imitates the dead knows things it shouldn't.

Beginners do best with the A1 Italian stories. If you like a theft at the centre of the puzzle, the cosy Italian crime stories overlap a lot with this page; every Italian series is listed on the main stories page.