Sandro Cellini
5 primary works • 8 total works
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Book 6
Sandro Cellini faces his demons...
Sandro Cellini hasn't set foot in La Vipera, a derelict farmhouse just outside Florence that was once home to a free-living commune, for forty years - until the discovery of two bodies nearby leads him back there.
At the start of his career, Cellini investigated an accusation that minors were being corrupted at La Vipera, but no charges were ever brought. Now, tasked with tracking down former members of the community, he has a chance to finally discover what really went on all those years ago.
But in order to learn the true nature of the commune's mission, he must face his own traumatic memories. As he sifts through the lies, those closest to him are placed in danger. Only Cellini can unravel the final mystery of La Vipera, and so protect those he loves.
Introducing Sandro Cellini, ex-cop and private detective. Florence's answer to Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti.
'Thoughtful, lugubrious, adorable Florentine Sandro Cellini has become my comfort-detective of choice... He make me almost long for a cold so I can go to bed and read.' -- Louisa Young
When a young English girl goes missing from among Florence's hard-drinking, high-living community of foreign art students, at first ex-policeman, good husband and newly private detective Sandro Cellini is unwilling to see any connection with his investigation of the suicide of an elderly Jewish architect.
But as he looks more closely into the circumstances of Claudio Gentileschi's death the connections between the cases multiply, and Sandro's first case turns out to be darker and more complex than he could have imagined...
Behind the ancient and luxurious facade of Palazzo San Giorgio, there lies a series of terrible secrets; an old torture chamber, hidden for centuries in the bowels of the building, and a much more recent malevolence. The former head of security for this elite development has just died under suspicious circumstances and Sandro finds himself—quite literally—stepping into dead man's shoes.
He soon discovers that other unsavory incidents have tainted the prestigious opening. When one of the residents is found murdered in her room, events begin to spiral out of control. Sandro must work to untangle the complex web of relationships that exists between residents and staff to unmask a deadly killer, in this superb new Florentine mystery by Christobel Kent.
As Sandro gets to grips with the dispiriting realities of life as a private detective, touting for business among old contacts and following errant teenagers, an old case comes back to haunt him...
As Sandro Cellini gets to grips with the dispiriting realities of life as a private detective, touting for business among old contacts and following errant teenagers, an old case comes back to haunt him...
Once the subject of a routine investigation back in Sandro's early days as an investigator, Loni Meadows - the glamorous, charming and ruthless director of an artistic Trust based in a castle in the hills outside Florence - is found dead in circumstances Sandro cannot convince himself are accidental. However inconvenient his suspicions might be, both to Sandro - whose marriage appears to be disintegrating - and to Meadows's erstwhile employers at the Trust, he presses ahead with the case. And as Sandro attempts to uncover the truth of Loni Meadows's violent and lonely death, he finds himself drawn into the lives of the castle's highly strung community and the closed world they inhabit in the Casentino's isolated hills.