(See below for obits from The Independent and The Telegraph.)
GENEVA: British-born author Magdalen Nabb, whose crime novels about a quirky Italian investigator were acclaimed by her idol Georges Simenon, has died, her Swiss publishing house said Tuesday. She was 60.
Nabb, who also wrote stories for children and young adults, died of a stroke on Saturday [August 18, 2007] in Florence, Italy, where she had lived and worked since 1975, said Diogenes Verlag AG of Zurich.
Thirteen of her novels starring the Sicilian-born police detective Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia have already been published and she recently submitted a 14th, titled "Vita Nuova," which is to be released next year, Diogenes said.
"Her Guarnaccia detective novels were highly praised by Georges Simenon and others and were translated into 14 languages," the publisher's statement said.
A lifelong fan of Simenon, Nabb said she started writing her crime novels when the creator of the French detective Maigret stopped producing his books.
Born in the moorland village of Church, in Lancashire, northwest England, Nabb studied art and pottery and later taught in an English art school. In 1975 she moved to Florence, where she began writing her graceful, calm prose.
It was in the factory town of Montelupo Fiorentino, where she worked in a pottery studio, that Marshal Guarnaccia was born in her mind.
Publishers Weekly described Nabb's taciturn hero as "an unusual protagonist for a crime novel: he's neither a Bond-like sophisticate nor a recovering loser; a Sicilian living in Florence, he's neither on his own turf nor in a strange land. A modest family man, a quiet and calm observer — but no macho silence, mind you — he makes his way in a town he's come to know."
Nabb's Web site said she lived close to the Carabinieri station and would pop over to chat with its marshal, who kept her abreast of the city's latest crimes.
"I was almost addicted to Simenon," Diogenes quoted her as saying. "When it became clear to me that he would no longer deliver any more novels, I just had to start writing myself."
The admiration was mutual.
"She couldn't write as fast as Simenon read for he kept asking in a telegram after each new novel where the next one was," Diogenes said.
Their correspondence continued until his death in 1989 and, until then, the first copy of each book went to him.
Nabb published 13 books for children and young adults, including "The Enchanted Horse," "Twilight Ghost" and the "Josie Smith" series about a "girl who always has plenty of ideas."
Royalties from her Josie Smith books are given to a school for
Afghan refugees in Pakistan, while those from "The Enchanted Horse" go
to a charity helping working horses, donkeys and mules in the world's
poorest communities.
Magdalen Nabb, writer: born Church, Lancashire 16 January 1947; married (one son); died Florence, Italy 18 August 2007.
After a childhood tinged with tragedy, the crime writer and best-selling children's author Magdalen Nabb proved her spirit in her twenties. In 1975 she parted from her husband, upped sticks from her Lancashire home and moved with her young son, Liam, to Florence, although she knew no one there and couldn't speak Italian.
Nabb, creator of the award-winning Josie Smith novels and the television series based on them, never really got the acclaim she deserved for being the first – and arguably the best – of the expatriate writers to set a crime series in the rich soil of Italian politics and society. Her first Marshal Guarnaccia novel, Death of an Englishman, appeared in 1981, years before Michael Dibdin and Donna Leon began with their own series set in Italy.
Magdalen Nabb was born in Church, a moorland village in Lancashire, in 1947 and brought up in Ramsbottom, one of three sisters. Her father had contracted rheumatic fever and was unable to work so he spent a lot of time with Magdalen as she was growing up. She won an RSPCA short-story competition when she was seven, but didn't write again for 20 years. Her father painted watercolours and encouraged her to be an artist.
Nabb lost both her parents abruptly in her early teens. Her accounts of what happened varied but they either died together in a car crash or her father died from his weak constitution and her mother died soon after. Aged 13, she was sent to live with an uncle, who himself died two weeks later. For years she was plagued by a recurring nightmare in which she carried a coffin around with her.
She worked as a potter and taught the craft in adult education. She married young, "thinking that if I was losing all my family I'd better start my own". She was married for 10 years, but when the marriage broke up she decided, in 1975, at the age of 28, to move to Florence.
At first, she studied majolica ware in a studio in Montelupo Fiorentino, a pottery town near Florence. There she met the model for Marshal Guarnaccia. (The town later featured in The Marshal and the Murderer, 1987). The first thing she wrote, however, was a play – it won an Arts Council award – then short stories. Then, finally, Marshal Guarnaccia was born.
By then, unable to afford rent, she was working as curator of the Robert Browning museum – Browning's former house – and living there rent free. (She remained seven years.) Michael Dibdin visited the house to research his second novel, A Rich Full Death, a pastiche about Browning as a detective in 19th-century Florence. Nabb later used to joke: "He didn't tell me who he was – but, of course, at that time he wasn't. And neither was I."
Although Marshal Guarnaccia was based on a real policeman, she deliberately created him as a father figure. "He's nothing like my real father," she said later,
but he sprang fully armed from my head as a father-figure. To the extent that I once had one of those terrible nightmares where you're being threatened by something not very clear. I was panic-stricken but I phoned the Marshal and he came to save me.
She regarded the first novel as "almost a spoof" of a crime book. Her son, then 15, dictated the contents: a chase, a vicar, a corpse. Subsequent books, however, were whodunits only in a superficial sense, more concerned with character and the careful detailing of Florentine life and the aspects of Florence tourists seldom saw. The early ones included Death of a Dutchman (1982), Death in Springtime (1983), Death in Autumn (1985) and The Marshal and the Murderer (1987)."They are novels, not crime books," she insisted. "Crime is simply useful to me. A sudden death throws the spotlight on people's lives."
Nabb admired the work of Georges Simenon. "He was one of the reasons I turned to crime writing." She sent the first book, unsolicited, to him as a Christmas present in 1980. He replied with praise and recommended her to his German publisher. They began a correspondence that continued until his death. She sent him the first copy of every book. "He was my inspiration and my mentor, although I never plucked up the courage to meet him. I used to get very anxious about not being able to write and he would calm me and give me bits of advice."
Nabb and her son moved in Florence to San Frediano, the home at the time of "chicken robbers and petty criminals" but also full of artisans. Her books were all based on real cases.
Guarnaccia – a Sicilian and therefore an outsider in Florence – is a fine creation. Although Nabb's rate of production slowed after a stroke in 1994, in all she wrote 13 Marshal Guarnaccia novels, most recently The Innocent (2006). In the late 1980s, however, she had also turned to children's fiction, creating a series based on her childhood in Lancashire. Her first Josie Smith book was runner-up for the Guardian Children's Fiction Award in 1989, and in 1991, Josie Smith and Eileen won a Smarties Book Prize. Nabb then scripted the Granada TV series. She also wrote two stand-alone children's books: The Enchanted Horse (1992) and Twilight Ghost (2002).
The success of her children's novels and the fact that her crime novels were published in 12 countries gave her financial independence. This allowed her to get involved in, and give money to, charities that she felt could make a real, practical difference.
The royalties from the Josie Smith books went to buy books for Afghan refugee children in a school in Pakistan. The royalties from The Enchanted Horse went to the Brooke Hospital for Animals, which looks after the working horses, mules and donkeys of the world's poorest people. Although she had never ridden as a child, a horse was almost the first thing she bought when she had her first success. She suffered a second stroke whilst riding last weekend.
Before her death she had completed a new novel, Vita Nuova, which will be published in 2008.
Peter Guttridge
Magdalen Nabb, who has died in Florence aged 60, was a writer of elegant crime fiction and later of children's books; her mystery novels featuring the brooding investigator Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia were mostly based on real crimes committed in Florence and investigated by the Carabinieri.
Although never in the best-selling lists alongside such crime writers as Michael Dibdin and Donna Leon, some critics believed that she should have been there. "The mystery for me," observed The Sunday Telegraph's crime critic Susanna Yager, "is why Magdalen Nabb is not better known."
Her novel Some Bitter Taste (2003) was, in Antonia Fraser's estimation, "so cunningly plotted that it is only at the end that you realise that not one strand of the intricate tapestry has been superfluous". And of the same book Simon Brett wrote: "The Marshal is a completely original creation, and a welcome rarity in crime fiction. Sympathy and compassion are the keynotes to his character. Crime novels these days are peopled by so many flawed detective heroes, fighting their past, their melancholy or their addictions, that it is a relief to spend time in the Marshal's company."
The first book to feature Marshal Guarnaccia, Death of an Englishman, appeared in 1981; and it so impressed Georges Simenon, the creator of Maigret, that he wrote to congratulate the authoress. Having been a fan of Simenon for as long as she could remember, Magdalen Nabb was astonished and delighted to receive his letter, and the two writers began a correspondence which continued until Simenon's death in 1989. Magdalen Nabb would even send the first copy of each of her books to Simenon.
It was an apt literary friendship; just as Simenon brought an intimate knowledge of a city and its inhabitants to Maigret's Paris, so did Magdalen Nabb bring alive the characters - bar owners, antiques restorers, market traders - in Guarnaccia's Florence.
Because most of her stories were based on real crimes, her research involved extensive collaboration with the Carabinieri, often at the highest level. When she was working on a book, officers would arrive at her house bearing papers from the case files for her to scrutinise.
Her novel The Monster of Florence (1997) was loosely based on the seven gruesome double murders which occurred in and around the city between 1968 and 1985; the Italian press referred to the perpetrator as "il mostro".
Magdalen Nabb was born Magdalen Nuttal on January 16 1947 at the moorland village of Church, near Blackburn, and was brought up at Ramsbottom, in Lancashire. Known in the family circle as Magda, she was educated at the Convent Grammar School, Bury, before going on to art college in Manchester. She then trained as a teacher and taught at a primary school in Lancashire. She was also a talented potter.
Magdalen was married young, to James Nabb, and they had a son; but the union did not last, and by 1975 Magdalen was ready to seek new horizons. Britain at that time was economically depressed, bogged down by industrial and political strife, and she decided to exchange it for the more agreeable environment of Italy. Florence was the place she chose, and she moved there with her young son and her then companion, the poet Nigel Thompson.
Magdalen Nabb learned Italian and found work first as a grape-picker and then as a potter at a majolica studio at Montelupo, a pottery town near Florence. She had already tried her hand at writing plays, but was soon to start on her series of detective novels. It was at Montelupo that she encountered the physical model for Marshal Guarnaccia.
This was a policeman she spotted lunching at a restaurant; his eyes were streaming (apparently as a result of an allergy) and he was concealing his affliction behind a pair of dark glasses. The town of Montelupo itself was to feature in The Marshal and the Murderer (1987).
Subsequently, Magdalen Nabb was appointed custodian of Casa Guidi, Robert Browning's house in the Piazza San Felice in Florence. She took up residence there, showed visitors over the house, and used some of its features for the setting of Death of an Englishman.
Now embarked on her career as a writer, while engaged on research for her books she was a regular visitor to the Carabinieri headquarters at the Pitti Palace; her friends there regularly read her manuscripts for accuracy. One of her novels, The Innocent (written with Paolo Vagheggi), was about the Mafia.
Later in her career Magdalen Nabb took to writing children's fiction in addition to her crime novels. Her 11 books for children included a series about Josie Smith (based on Magdalen's own childhood and that of her son, Liam); the books formed the basis for a Granada Television series which ran for three years.
Although meticulous in her research, Magdalen Nabb wrote, unusually, "in her head" until she felt that a book was ready to be put down on paper. A publisher asking for a progress report would be told: "I'm writing it while I'm weeding and washing up, and you'll have the book at the end of October as I promised, fully cooked."
Her books for both adults and children have been translated into many languages, including French, German, Japanese, Flemish, Danish, Dutch, Hebrew, Portuguese, Spanish and Croatian.
In all she published 13 detective novels; the most recent, The Innocent, came out in 2005. Her last novel, Vita Nuova, is due to be published next year.
There are 11 books in the Josie Smith series (a twelfth, Josie Smith and the Big Fight with Eileen, is to be published in October), as well as two other books for children, The Enchanted Horse (which won the Smarties Book Prize in 1993) and Twilight Ghost.
Magdalen Nabb's great love was riding. Thirteen years ago she suffered a serious stroke, and was not expected to survive; but she determinedly fought her way back to health and was riding again within a few years.
In 2005 she rode for six hours a day across Kenya to raise money for the Brooke Hospital for Animals. Royalties from The Enchanted Horse go to the same cause.
Having visited Afghanistan three years ago, she supported a school for Afghan refugee children and financed a well to provide water for an Afghan village.
Magdalen Nabb was a strong and wilful character, but extremely good company.
She died on Saturday after suffering another stroke while out riding. At her funeral on Monday officers of the Carabinieri in full ceremonial dress formed a guard of honour for her coffin.
She is survived by her son.