Classic Italian crime fiction by the Donna Leon of Florence, the acclaimed Magdalen Nabb There was enough trouble around to keep the police busy for months. All over Florence tourists were being robbed, cars stolen, and somewhere in the city terrorists were quietly at work. So the suicide of a Dutch jeweller looked like an open and shut case. Certainly there were some slight discrepancies. But the only witnesses were a blind man, and an old woman given to vicious lying. Yet the Marshal felt uneasy - it was all so conveniently simple...

Olivia, an American-born model, married Count Ugo Brunamonti, a feckless, soon impoverished aristocrat. After his death, she supported her children by starting a fashion house which has prospered. When she is kidnapped, the crime is reported to Marshal Guarnaccia by her daughter, who may have been the intended victim. Kidnapping is almost a second business for the Sardinians nominally engaged in raising sheep in the Tuscan hills. They inhabit a vast wilderness where a victim can be hidden away forever, and where those searching for her will be quickly spotted. The government's official policy is not to permit the payment of ransom. But if the money isn't paid, the kidnappers cannot let their victim go free. It would set a bad example. In this case, Guarnaccia suspects another problem. Can it be that Olivia's children are unwilling to pay the ransom? Is this more than a random crime?

"The most consistent of all series in terms of language control, length, and quality of story." David R. Hill, Director of the Edinburgh Project on Extensive Reading.

A chilling, gripping and perceptive novel based on the real-life case of a Florentine serial killer, from the highly acclaimed Magdalen Nabb Marshal Guarnaccia of the Florence carabinieri is first puzzled and then irritated when he is dragged into a last-ditch attempt to nail the Monster, a vicious serial killer who has ritually slaughtered seven courting couples in the most brutal of circumstances. But he is soon sucked into the horror and squalor of a multi-layered case that has confounded the authorities for over ten years. So when a case is made out against the wrong man - a monster in his own right who beats his wife and sexually abuses his daughter - who is going to admit it? Summoning the courage to speak out, the Marshal rapidly realises that no one wants to listen. It is more comfortable for everyone, even the wrongly accused man, if the blood-soaked vineyards keep their secret of what really happened on the Saturday nights of the new moon...

It is spring in Florence and everyone around Marshal Guarnaccia seems to be in love, even his own son. The case he is working on, the murder of a young woman, seems to present no particular problems. No distressed parents, no political or influential connections, no pressure from the media. The investigation takes him only a few steps from home, to the Boboli gardens and to the artisans' quarter - where he knows everybody and everybody knows him. The locals also trust him - until he seems to be accusing one of them... Then everything changes. A second death follows and Guarnaccia is convinced that it is his fault. The case becomes one of the most distressing he's ever had to handle. Burdened with guilt, he finds it impossible to trust his own instincts any more...But he has to learn to do so before he can get at the truth...

Introducing Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia of the Florentine carabinieri, a Sicilian stationed far from home. He wants to go south for Christmas to spend the holiday with his family, but he is laid up with the 'flu. At this awkward moment, the death of a retired Englishman is reported. A most inconvenient time for a murder case. Who has shot Mr Langley-Smythe in the back? And why has Scotland Yard felt it appropriate to send two detectives, one of whom speaks no Italian, to 'help' the marshal and his colleagues with their investigation? Most importantly for the marshal, ever the Italian, will he be able to solve the crime in time to join his family over the holiday season? This first book in the ever popular detective series is a wonderfully evocative piece of crime fiction and quasi-travel writing, as the reader is immediately transported into the heart of Florence, one of Italy's most beautiful cities.