Today we have a quick post for a Thursday that has to do with a mystery, Italian, and coffee. It’s from an Italian mystery book where the protagonist is a barista, i.e. a guy who owns an Italian bar where people go to get coffee as well as alcoholic drinks.  In English the book is called Game for Five, by Marco Malvaldi.  If you want to read the book, STOP READING THIS POST NOW, as I will reveal a major spoiler at the end of this post.

First, I should say that  a long time ago, shortly after we moved to Bolzano, Italy, I wrote up some notes on Italian coffee.  Click here to read that post.

I’ll wait.

OK, right, now that you’ve read my notes, you’ll have seen that I have been aware for some time that Italians do NOT drink a cappuccino or any other milk-heavy coffee drink after 10am.  It’s considered bad for your health. Tourists are given a bit of a pass on this “prohibition”, but any decent Italian would never think to order or drink a coffee with lots of milk after 10am. It’s just not done.

So it was amusing when Chris was reading the Game for Five book last week and got to a scene where the Italian barista refuses to serve a cappuccino to an Italian man after 10am. The barista comments that serving a drink like that later in the day is something he will NOT do.  He might make an exception for a tourist, he says, but for an Italian – never!

Chris read me the passage, which we both found amusing. I then commented that clearly an Italian who dared to order a cappuccino after mid-morning was so morally suspect that he must be the murderer.

I was joking.

But that actually turned out to be the solution. Too funny.

So, now, I don’t mean to be rude, but — as I also commented in that old blog post — if you are ever roaming around Italy with us, and we go into a bar together to get a coffee, and it’s after 10am and you order a cappuccino …  we’ll just have to pretend we don’t know you.

Nothing personal, you understand.  But if the baristas were ever to find out that we’re former residents of Italy, we wouldn’t want them to think we’re capable of murder.