End of a Splendid Pairing

This is very sad news. I learned from Facebook earlier this week that Michael G. Jacob, who with his wife, Daniela De Gregorio (and under their joint pen name, Michael Gregorio), wrote the excellent Hanno Stiffeniis and Sebastiano Cangio series, “died suddenly back in November,” just a month after his 77th birthday. I haven’t found an obituary published anywhere that cites his cause of death.

What little I can easily piece together of Michael’s backstory is this: He was born in Liverpool, England, on October 8, 1948, and eventually graduated from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne before moving to Italy. He and Daniela lived in Spoleto, a small town in that country’s Umbria region. At one point he taught English and the history of photography. But both Michael and Daniela wished to publish novels. He recounted during a 2010 interview with The Rap Sheet how they finally made that dream come true:

Back in 2000, we were working separately on novels, but neither of us seemed to be going any­­where. Daniela was teaching philosophy, and she was fascinated by something she had read about the Prussian philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Indeed, she had plans to write a short story about the great thinker, and the rough ex-soldier, Martin Lampe, who was his personal valet. The two men had been living under the same roof for almost 30 years when, one day, the servant was sacked on the spot. What had Lampe done to give offense? And why did the “most rational man in the world” paste notices around his house, reminding himself to “Forget Martin Lampe”? Kant’s biographers had little to say on the subject, so we began working together on a possible explanation. The result in 2006 was A Critique of Criminal Reason.

Although Kant plays a role in the serial-murder investigation central to that novel, set in 1804 in the then-Prussian town of Königsberg (now part of Russia), the protagonist is actually a young magistrate and reluctant investigator, Hanno Stiffeniis. Michael and Daniela later produced another three tales starring Stiffeniis, the last of which was Unholy Awakening (2010). After announcing it was “time for Hanno to take a break,” they created another mystery series, this one set in modern times and led by Sebastiano Cangio, a park ranger in central Italy’s “stunning” Sybilline Mountains National Park. The first of those three works was Cry Wolf, which appeared in 2014. At least one other work of historical fiction carries the Michael Gregorio byline: Your Money or Your Life, published in France in 2013 and featuring Renaissance-era fresco artists traveling through Italy.

Although we never met, Michael was a fine and thoughtful correspondent. He contributed a variety of posts to The Rap Sheet over the years, on subjects ranging from the 2008 Italian Mafia movie Gomorra to Mike Ripley’s 2017 study of British thrillers, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I read and greatly enjoyed all four of the Stiffeniis novels he penned with Daniela, and I still look at them fondly on my bookcases. He will be greatly and truly missed.

I wish Daniela the best in the face of this loss.

READ MORE: “Michael Gregorio on the Mafia, Pseudonyms and More” (Publishers Weekly).