The Dead Season (Pegasus Crime)

Every August, Florence shimmers in the summer heat. But this year the heatwave is fiercer than usual, and the city's inhabitants have fled to the cool of the hills and beaches of the surrounding countryside. So it is no surprise that amidst the shrubbery of a normally busy roundabout, a corpse lies unnoticed, bloating in the humid air.

Sandro Cellini will not be joining the crowds of holidaymakers this year. The former policeman turned private detective has a case: a man who seems to have vanished into thin air - leaving his pregnant young wife alone in the city. Meanwhile, bank teller Roxana Delfino is also stuck in the city for the season, with nothing to do but worry for her aging mother and puzzle over the disappearance of one her regular clients.

As all Florence sweats it out, Cellini attempts as best he can to grapple with his case and the complications it throws up. And when the weather finally breaks, it brings with it a shocking revelation . . .

"During a sweltering August in Florence, Sandro Cellini looks for pregnant Anna Niescu's missing banker fiancé, in British author Kent's excellent third novel featuring the Italian PI (after 2011's A Murder in Tuscany). A corpse that surfaces with the same name as Anna's fiancé turns out to be the wrong man. Instead, Cellini discovers, their quarry is unwittingly entangled in schemes that have forced him underground for safety. As the investigation of disappearance and murder circles the city's changing landscape, a trio of strong, idiosyncratic women — Cellini's cancer-survivor wife, Luisa; his assistant, Guili Sarto; and quirky bank teller Roxana Delfino — help him rediscover lost connections. Kent brings her characters to rich and convincing life amid story lines full of subtlety and surprise. Florence, too, springs vividly from the page, evoked with sharp observation and an admirable absence of cliché. Kent's reputation as a writer of smart, atmospheric mysteries with literary as well as genre appeal should continue to grow. Agent: Nathaniel Jacks, Inkwell Management." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

"Kent combines rich atmospherics and fully realized characters with a deceptively simple puzzle in her outstanding mysteries featuring Italian PI Sandro Cellini."--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Christobel Kent's previous books include A Time of Mourning, A Party in San Niccolo, Late Season and A Florentine Revenge. She lives near Cambridge with her husband and five children.