A Florentine Mystery
13 primary works
Book 1
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. 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 enquiries? Most importantly for the marshal, ever the Italian, will he be able to solve the crime sufficiently quickly for him to be able to join his family over the holiday season?
Book 2
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...
Book 3
Italian law forbids paying ransom to criminals, and Marshal Guarnaccia must find the missing girl before her kidnappers decide to end her life.
Two foreign girls are abducted from a Florence piazza in broad daylight. The unusual March snowfall has distracted everyone, even the marshal, who is unsure of what he has actually witnessed. One of the girls turns up in a village in the Chianti, claiming the kidnappers have released her to propose a ransom for the other victim. But the marshal thinks she’s lying.
Two foreign girls are abducted from a Florence piazza in broad daylight. The unusual March snowfall has distracted everyone, even the marshal, who is unsure of what he has actually witnessed. One of the girls turns up in a village in the Chianti, claiming the kidnappers have released her to propose a ransom for the other victim. But the marshal thinks she’s lying.
Book 4
The body of a woman, clad in nothing but a fur coat and jewelry, is found floating in the Arno at dawn. Marshal Guarnaccia of the Florentine carabinieri identifies her as a foreigner who lived for years as a recluse in one of Florence’s most respectable hotels. But how and why did she die? Following a complex trail of blackmail, jewel theft, and drug-dealing, Marshal Guarnaccia finally tracks down the shocking truths about a cold-blooded murderer and his all-too-trusting victim.
Book 5
A young Swiss art student has been reported missing, and Marshal Guarnaccia must travel to the small town where she was studying to find out the truth about her disappearance. When her body is found, it appears that she was the victim of a sex-related crime. But Guarnaccia—who comes from a small town himself—suspects that a local feud with roots in the horrors and betrayals of World War II may play an important part in the solution to the crime.
Book 6
Out giving his wife driving lessons, Marshal Guarnaccia of the Carabinieri witnesses a disturbance in the streets involving a local eccentric, “crazy Clementina.” When the woman is found dead in her apartment soon after the incident of an apparent suicide, the marshal is puzzled and immediately suspects foul play. But who would have a motive to kill her? As the marshal dives into the case and reconstructs Clementina’s tragic past, his investigation dredges up the events surrounding a disastrous flood some twenty years earlier and a controversial piece of legislation with profound effects on the lives of Italy’s mentally unstable residents.
Book 8
The eighth Marshal Guarnaccia investigation
A member of one of the oldest aristocratic families in Florence is dead. When Marshal Guarnaccia arrives at the scene, in the courtyard of the crumbling Palazzo Ulderighi, he knows instinctively that something is amiss. The evidence suggests suicide, the family—including the victim’s wife, the financially troubled Marchesa Ulderighi—insists it was an accident, and the Marshal suspects something far more malevolent. While mounting an investigation against the Florentine elite means putting his very career on the line, Marshal Guarnaccia remains determined to see justice done.
A member of one of the oldest aristocratic families in Florence is dead. When Marshal Guarnaccia arrives at the scene, in the courtyard of the crumbling Palazzo Ulderighi, he knows instinctively that something is amiss. The evidence suggests suicide, the family—including the victim’s wife, the financially troubled Marchesa Ulderighi—insists it was an accident, and the Marshal suspects something far more malevolent. While mounting an investigation against the Florentine elite means putting his very career on the line, Marshal Guarnaccia remains determined to see justice done.
Book 9
A prominent writer is found dead in the Villa Torrini outside of Florence without any marks of physical harm on her. Her husband, who was heavily intoxicated in the next room, is exhibiting signs of guilt, but the carabinieri are having trouble finding concrete evidence against him. Marshal Guarnaccia, who is already struggling with a strict diet and the intricacies of a new legal system, has little faith in his own ability to solve the case, but his intuition turns out to be invaluable.
Book 10
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...
Book 11
The American-born founder of a prominent fashion house, Contessa Olivia Brunamonti, is mistaken for her daughter and kidnapped by a group of Sardinian shepherds. They’re holding her deep in the Tuscan hills and have demanded a huge sum for her return. Her daughter failed to report the incident for over a week, and the family’s assets have been frozen by an Italian government that forbids paying ransom. But the kidnappers can’t release their victim without being paid—it would set a bad precedent. And Guarnaccia suspects another problem: Could it be that Olivia’s children don’t want to save their mother? Is this more than just a random crime?
Book 12
When it comes to motives for crime, the past can never be forgotten. Sara Hirsch is a nervous elderly spinster who still lives in the flat in Florence in which she was raised. Frightened, she calls Marshal Guarnaccia for help, sure that strangers have been in her apartment. The marshal knows she is a lonely and frightened old woman but he is preoccupied with an investigation into an Albanian prostitution ring. Before he can respond to her latest alarm, she is found dead. The marshal's search for the villains who precipitated her death brings him into confrontation with the past, with Jewish refugees from fascism, and with English expatriates, including the ailing heir to the elegant Villa L'Uliveto, Sir Christopher Wrothesly...
Book 13
The unputdownable new Marshal Guarnaccia novel, from the acclaimed author of Some Bitter Taste and Property of Blood. 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...
Book 14
When Marshal Guarnaccia is called upon to investigate the murder of a young woman, he is convinced that there's more to her family than meets the eye, and wonders if the girl's father, Paoletti, might have had something to do with her death. Enlisting the help of a local journalist, Marshal Guarnaccia's investigations draw him into the seedy underworld of Florence - lap dancing, prostitution and the illegal, human trafficking of Eastern European women who are sold into the sex trade. But can he save these women before it's too late? And what do they have to do with the killing of Daniela Paoletti? Distracted by the plight of these women and the murder investigation, Guarnaccia forgets about his own personal problems but it's not long before he has choices to make - should he seek help and risk exposing himself and possibly losing his job, or should he go it alone?