Murder in an Italian Cafe

August 12, 2024
In Falco’s delightful second cozy featuring Bria Bartolucci (after Murder in an Italian Village), the widowed Amalfi coast B&B owner investigates the death of a celebrity chef. Famous Italian food personality Lugo Gordonato is planning to launch a new TV show with an episode shot on the Amalfi coast. Lugo’s manager has selected a café run by Bria’s friend, Annamaria Antonelli, as the setting for the pilot, but when Annamaria is late to the first day of shooting, he ropes in Bria as Lugo’s cohost instead. Starstruck, Bria chats with Lugo just before the show’s main segment, and he confides that he’s planning to go off-script. Moments later, with cameras rolling, Lugo clutches his throat and dies in front of Bria and the entire production crew. Horrified, Bria springs into investigation mode with the help of her best friend, Rosalie, and Bria’s budding romantic interest, police chief Luca Vivaldi. After parsing a surprisingly long list of suspects, a well-hidden piece of Lugo’s past points the crew toward the surprising killer. In an improvement on the previous entry, Falco matches his lush descriptions of the glittering Italian coast with top-shelf fair-play sleuthing. Armchair detectives and armchair travelers: rejoice. Agent: Evan Marshall, Evan Marshall Agency.

September 1, 2024
A young widow finds adventure on the beautiful Amalfi Coast. It was Bria Bartolucci's dream to run a B&B in beautiful Positano with her husband, Carlo. After he dies in a plane crash, she honors his memory by opening Bella Bella as planned, showing her young son, Marco, that it's "better to confront a challenge than to cower from one." Maybe it's her love of challenges that leads Bria to probe the death of Luigi "Chef Lugo" Gordonato, who dies suddenly while filming a TV show at the cafe owned by her friend Annamaria. Or maybe it's her friendship with handsome police chief Luca Vivaldi, her best friend Rosalie's brother. There's no dearth of clues--from notes crammed into fake cannoli to mysterious women canoodling with the victim-to-be on the beach, Bria's got plenty to work with. But the sheer density of details weighs down what could have been a lighthearted frolic in a spectacular setting. After the long climb up the stairs to Bella Bella, Rosalie has an asthma attack, and it takes four paragraphs to get her breathing regularly again. Bria's handyman replaces a tile "that had broken, thanks to the overgrown roots of an overzealous lemon tree." It's hard for readers to tell what's a clue and what's just a display of adjectival exuberance, and in either case, their reaction is likely to be relief that it's finally over. Too many subplots, too many distractions, even too much pastry.

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