Got Lucky (Italian Art Theft Adventure Series Book 14)
These same works travel through the centuries to appear once again today in Florence or in Roma. This begins the adventure and the theft. Really, it's all so much fun! In all of John Galavan's series, there is a main cast of characters- all of whom John wants to hang with! Oregon is cold, wet, brilliant and spooky at times. Italy is the same- not spooky but with great art! There is that marvelous story of how a masterpiece was created, the struggles required, and the luck which enabled it to appear so many centuries later in Florence and Roma!
Tag along, why not! The following gives a "series reader" an opportunity to follow the character's ages and events So, always more fun reading in chronological order. Are you an author? Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biography. Learn more at Author Central. Popularity Popularity Featured Price: Low to High Price: High to Low Avg.
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Amazon Rapids Fun stories for kids on the go. Amazon Restaurants Food delivery from local restaurants. ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics. East Dane Designer Men's Fashion. The reader does not need to be an expert on these times or people; the author informatively guides us through them. While reading A Comedy of Murders , I found myself playing a film of the story in my mind, in the style of Lester's filming of the classic historical adventure tale. Both tales are told as bawdy, silly, historical farce, in which real people from the past are imagined as flawed, corrupt, pompous idiots who are lost in circumstances beyond their control.
There are some characters who rise above others in their moral fortitude, and one of those is the artist-architect Leonardo da Vinci. The author weaves Leonardo's life and work into the story, and from about page ninety, Leonardo plays a large role in the story. A Comedy of Murders is actually the first novel in a series of comic novels that feature Leonardo da Vinci and his friend, the fictional Niccolo de Pavia, a diminutive scholar and courtier.
There are eight books in the series, all historical comedies for adults set during the height of the Italian Renaissance, full of courts, castles, dungeons, torture, gossip, courtesans, rivalries, out-sized egos, rampant libidos, political scheming, erudite learning, monumental building project, and the creation of timeless art. I would advise a reader to sit back and savor the author's masterful recreation of that raucous, vibrant, violent, cruel and creative era. He is especially knowledgeable about Renaissance warfare, and Leonard da Vinci's work.
Do not expect a "mystery novel". Be open to the comic historical novel, and let history wash over you. The author makes us a visitor to a Renaissance city-state's court, and puts us in the middle of all the nonsense. This Kindle mobi e-book series is pure, silly, fanciful fun. The protagonist of the series, U. Her scatter-brained, fantasy-filled, very funny ramblings describe the adventures of Lily, and her two best girlfriends, and an assorted group of extras, as they attempt to deal with the problems and mysteries that their lives throw at them.
Julie Sarff is wonderful at setting up comic set pieces. I thought her funniest sequence was in a Swiss hospital. Lily is given a relaxant to calm her anxiety after a car accident, but the drug has hallucinatory consequences. She becomes convinced that her doctor is Swiss tennis star Roger Federer. So, naturally, she attempts to pluck his uni-brow into two respectable eyebrows, with bloody results! If you enjoy books in a first-person, rambling style, lots of humor, clean romance, light mystery, with a strong dose of local Italian flavor, then the Kissed in Italy Mystery Series is for you.
This Indie-Author is creating a quality series of entertaining, light reads, with stunning covers!
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After having read books 1 through 3 I have to say that the humor is consistently and effortlessly funny. The books are a wonderful way to spend your free time, leaving you in a much better mood than when you first sat down. The characters are varied and realistic. The depictions of fame and the famous on ordinary people ring spot on.
And the accurate descriptions of Italians of all stripes speak of personal experience, not of cliches. I suggest you purchase books 2 through 4 together, so you get a complete story; hopefully the author will package them together in future. I love cozy-murder-mysteries, but I have found that those who don't like them tend to actually loath them. So, only true fans should take up this book. It is a classic murder mystery with suspense elements, with the added element of legal expertise from the Anglo-Italian solicitor amateur detective, Alicia Allen.
London, England, is not physically far from Italy, but it is culturally light-years away. Anglo-Italian Alicia has grown up spending her summers in Italy, and speaking Italian with her mother and sister at home. She loves Italian food, great coffee, red wine, her close family, and the community she creates around her with neighbors and co-workers. She also loves Pringles potato chips! That must be the English side of her. Cozies take their time, so if you are fan, you know to savor the setting details, and the meanderings, and the theories, and the relationships.
They are all here, true to the genre, along with multiple murders, investigative trails galore, an exciting ending, and a romantic Epilog. Books in the Alicia Allen Mysteries: She grew up in Houston, Texas, with her parents, brothers, and her very-Sicilian paternal grandmother. All that wonderful Italian ethnicity enriches Limoncello Yellow. The private detecting firm that Franki joins is run by Franki's old friend, Veronica Maggio, another hyphenated Italian. The two women bonded in college over "all things Italian", and they enjoy joking together about their ethnicity. The cover of the book is very cute, as is the title Limoncello Yellow.
The review-copy e-book I read had a very clear layout and is well-edited, with distinct paragraphs that begin with indents. Franki's parents and grandmother nonna like to play an active part in Franki's life, especially her love-life. When Franki informs the family she is moving to New Orleans, nonna likes the idea of her spinster a zitella at twenty-nine grand-daughter going to the city where nonna lived previously: Cozy murder mystery romance humor chick-lit: Please read my full review at Italophile Book Reviews.
The title of the series comes from the lingerie store that the protagonist, Carlina, owns and runs, Temptation, on one of Florence, Italy's, premier shopping streets. The Temptation in Florence Series follows the life, adventures and loves of Italian-American Carlina, and of her extended eccentric Italian family, many of whom live in apartments in the same building in central Florence as Carlina and her mother. American father passed away when Carlina was in her teens, after which her Italian mother moved back to Italy with Carlina and her two siblings.
The mixed heritage shows in Carlina's unusual sense of humor that has a rich sense of the absurd. She is also lacking in ego, which makes Carlina something of a willing doormat for her strong-willed relations. The family's eccentric members and their whims and wishes are a never-ending source of amusement for Carlina. While often treated like the family's Cinderella, Carlina is also a sexy, saucy, funny thirty-two-year-old woman. When a crisis occurs, right at the beginning of Delayed Death , and Carlina gives in to her domineering cousin's wishes, Carlina sets herself on a collision course with police Commissario Stefano Garini.
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The English in Delayed Death is easy to read and well-edited. The cover is very eye-catching, as are the covers of each book in the series. There are interesting contrasting characters, lovely Florentine locations, gentle humor, and an entertaining possible love match that rings true. The story builds nicely and keeps the action varied with enjoyable interplay between the oddball characters, and especially between Carlina and Stefano. The Temptation lingerie shop offers lots of opportunity for laughs, among the panties, bras and thongs.
My only reservation is the abrupt ending. I wanted to hear from the killer how the killings were done and why they were committed. The love-story felt unresolved, too, at the end. Perhaps the author wanted to leave that for the next book in the series? I'll have to read them to find out. Her self-deprecating humor and her friends, loyal to the occasionally clueless young woman, help her survive.
The author has made Mina a refreshingly realistic young woman. Not a silly, kick-ass, one-dimensional character favored by so many publishers these days, Mina is a young woman who has yet to find her place in life. She is moderately educated, foreign to many American ways, gullible, and has a wonderful sense of the ridiculous. Mina's humor is real plus to this traditionally written, third-person narrated, clean cozy murder-mystery series.
Her unpredictable reactions bring a spontaneity to the story, keeping us guessing about what will happen next, and what Mina will do or say next. I have read, and enjoyed, all three books in The Mina's Adventures Series: The books are entertainingly realistic romantic adventure stories, with mystery and suspense, featuring a complex, growing character, who reacts with realistic human strength and weakness to her unusual situations. I look forward to the next one! I review each of the books, without revealing spoilers, on my Italophile Book Reviews site.
Here is the direct link to that page , with the full reviews, and illustrations by the famous Italian advertising poster artist Leonetto Cappiello. The author has another mystery series that features an Italian-immgrant to the U. I review the first book in the series at my Italophile Book Reviews site: Murder Under the Italian Moon. Murder and Marinara by Rosie Genova. The series' protagonist is Victoria Renzi.
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Vic is our first-person narrator of the book, guiding us through her adventure with a dry sense of humor. The book starts quickly, expertly setting the scene, and introducing us to the various characters in the Renzi family, and to people linked with the family restaurant. The Renzi family jumps off the pages with life, easy to visualize and easy to understand. If you are from that area of the world, you will probably enjoy the story even more, since the locations and people will be instantly recognizable to you.
The story moves along swiftly. It is a solid, by-the-book, cozy-murder-mystery: The murder that occurs is a disaster for the Renzis so Vic gets involved in the investigation to help her family. Vic questions suspects, ruminates on the case with a side-kick, and eventually resolves the case with an exciting finish. Murder and Marinara is full of lots of love for the Jersey Shore and for Italian food and for Italian-American culture. There are even recipes at the end of the book, including the titular Marinara Sauce. This is a book for Italophile cozy-enthusiasts! Please visit my full, illustrated review at Italophile Book Reviews:.
She is a woman of a certain age, volatile, emotional, unpredictable, and always getting herself into difficulties with the law. One lawman becomes special to her heart and their relationship becomes one of the many bright spots in this inventive series. Series Translated from Italian not all the books have been translated yet. Before he wrote them, he produced them for television, making the acclaimed Maigret series. But it's for his Commissario Montalbano that he's most famous.
The books are written in Italian and available in translation in various languages. Montalbano works in Sicily, and when he's not solving crimes and arresting bad guys, he's enjoying the beaches, good wine, great food, and quirky inhabitants of the ancient island. There is also his girlfriend, Livia, who is treated rather shabbily throughout the series, as are pretty much all the female partners, actually. The series has been filmed for Italian television and is available on DVD.
Be prepared for beautiful location filming, some incomprehensible language, and lots of macho men who lie far too easily to their women , who are generally-speaking not treated with much respect. Images from "Il Commissario Montalbano", an Italian series of film-length episodes based on Andrea Camillieri's police procedural novels, several of which have been translated into English. The series stars Luca Zingaretti and is a huge hit in Italy and Germany a German actress plays his long-suffering girlfriend. The Montalbano series is filmed on location in Sicily which brings stunning locations to the police-dramas.
And they score it with Sicilian music for added flavor. Dear to Montalbano's heart is eating, especially at his favorite restaurant with his favorite chef. He's known to lie to colleagues and girlfriend about his whereabouts to conceal his preference for eating over their company. Sicily has beautiful palaces, some of which feature in the location-shot series. Here is one, but you can find others on my Palaces of Sicily page. He tackles the most difficult cases and sticks with them until all the nasty facts come to light.
His fictional character of Michele Ferrara clearly walks in the author's footsteps, bringing a verisimilitude to the books that other police procedural series may lack. If you are a Florence fan, and who isn't, you will enjoy the specific streets and buildings that are mentioned throughout A Florentine Death. There is a very strong sense of place in the book. Depictions of the Italian character are exceptionally strong in the book since it is written by an Italian about Italians, and originally written for an Italian audience.
The details about the police investigations are accurate, thanks to the author being a former head of Florence's Squadra Mobile. The writing style is very traditional, with separate strands following the killer and the police, until the moment the two strands combine near the end of the book. Be forewarned that some readers might not enjoy the slow style of this classic police procedural. The narration is in the third-person-limited, usually from Ferrara's mindset. However, like the English author David Hewson, whose style I think is similar to Guittari's, we are put into the mind of the very sick killer, too.
We are also treated to sex scenes, usually disturbing sex scenes, also similar to David Hewson's books. Negatives about A Florentine Death are not really negative, but observations about things I did not particularly enjoy. First, I felt that the story was very male dominated, with the female characters shallowly or stereotypically drawn and suffocated in a macho society.
Second, the plot centers around homosexuality, which in Italian society seems quite behind-the-times compared to my understanding and upbringing. Marco "Alligator is a Private Investigator with an ex-con and blues singer past. True to his roots, his cases are rough, seamy and full of hidden Italy. His home base is Venice. When Helena is abducted, her husband approaches Alligator for help.
But Mariano seems more worried about losing his reputation than seeing his wife again. Behind Helena's abduction is a shadowy figure known as The Master of Knots—who proves to be as powerful as he is psychotic. Bandit Love is book three in The Alligator Series , a series of noir crime novels for adults featuring Marco "The Alligator" Buratti, an ex-con turned unofficial private detective.
The books are translated from the original Italian. Bandit Love features every seedy character one can imagine from the underbelly of society. I felt I needed a shower after reading this book, to wash off the filth. Set in northeast Italy, with Marco The Alligator based in Padova Padua , the reader is treated to a ringside seat as Eastern European gangsters fight it out for territory and influence in Italy.
The Italian gangsters look like amateurs by comparison. The first person account by Marco The Alligator is written long after the fact, describing an adventure that changed his life, and the lives of his two partners in crime and business: The narrative style is hard-boiled private investigator. The overall tone of Bandit Love is jaded, cynical, male humor, but the women in the novel are, surprisingly, both victims and victimizes, but most strikingly the victims of violence. There is a non-linear timeline that keeps the reader jumping, and there is lots of atmosphere from the criminal world, with gangsters of all sorts and types.
The biggest problem I have with Bandit Love is that there is no ending. There is no satisfying resolution to the "case". Perhaps the author is setting up the next book in the series? This book is only about pages long.
I reads more like the first half of a complete book, the second half of which has not yet been released. Commissario De Luca is heading up a dangerous investigation into the private lives of the rich and powerful during the frantic final days of the facist regime. The hierarchy has guaranteed De Luca their full cooperation, just so long as he arrests the "right" suspect. The house of cards built by Mussolini in the last months of WWII is collapsing and De Luca faces a world mired in sadistic sex, dirty money, drugs and murder.
De Luca suffers from insomnia and has lost his appetite. He's got problems with women and a case that he can't crack. In this second installment of the heralded De Luca trilogy, the Commissario is posing as a certain Giovanni Morandi to avoid reprisals for the role he played during the fascist dictatorship. Exposed by a member of the partisan police, De Luca is forced to investigate a series of brutal murders, becoming a reluctant player in Italy's postwar power struggle.
The brutal worlds of crime and politics conspire once again, and in this third and final book in the De Luca trilogy, winner of both the Italian Mystery Award and the Scerbanenco Prize, violence, power, and sex combine to create an atmosphere that becomes more volatile as the trilogy reaches its shocking finale.
Rookie female detective Grazia Negro is determined to solve the case. Soneri is said to be a bongustai, which is pretty much obligatory in Italy, no? The books in the series of 14 Italian books that have been translated so far into English: River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi.
River of Shadows is the first book in a police-procedural series set in the Po River Valley of Northern Italy, featuring the senior police officer Commissario Soneri. The book is translated from the original Italian. River of Shadows is slow-moving, atmospheric about the Po River area, and with an eye more in the past than in Italy's present-day. Third-person limited narration puts us in the head of Commissario Soneri, which is not necessarily a nice place to be. He is a difficult character: Under the influence of that addictive irritability-inducing curiosity, Soneri pursues his case without a thought for anyone else.
Commissario Soneri's primary release is food and wine, so we are treated to all his menus. Commissario Soneri's secondary release is the most discordant feature of the book. A cop-groupie woman has latched onto Soneri, his high rank in the police force a turn-on. She uses him throughout River of Shadows to indulge her other big turn-on, having sex in crime scenes and in the homes of crime victims. Italy's past battles between Communists and Fascists plays a central role in the story of River of Shadows. While the ending of River of Shadows does have Commissario Soneri getting the killer, it is not a satisfying ending.
An epilogue would have added greatly to the sense of closure for this reader. The ending, as it is, is too abrupt, without tying up loose ends, and without letting us now how the resolution of the case is treated by the media, and by Soneri's bosses, and the boatmen, all three of whom have become elements in the story. Cataldo is Sicilian but works in Modena. A reviewer describes him thus: He never rushes an interview, waiting out the silences with patience. His fondness for surrealist art suggests an intellectual bent. A suspected suicide, which Inspector Cataldo is called in to investigate, brings to the surface shady events belonging to the past, and a mysterious foreigner shakes up the delicate social balance of a group of friends who have a lot to hide.
Here is a description of how the first book begins: He moves into a flat where he knows no one, drinks a bit, and generally doesn't take very good care of himself. Then he gets involved in a controversial trial. The book is a translation from the original Italian into British English, at least my copy of the book was in British English.
The author, Gianrico Carofiglio, is a former Italian judge, so the legal aspects of his novels are very accurate, and are interesting in their own right due to the complexity of the Italian Justice System, which the author explains clearly for the reader. The book has a first-person narration by the protagonist, forty-year-old civil and criminal trial lawyer Guido Guerrieri, who recounts the events that make up his mid-life crisis, including the lost-cause court case that contributes to his redemptive recovery.
The author has filled his protagonist with a wicked sense of humor, which makes the book very entertaining. Dialog is often embedded in the narration, reminiscent of J.
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If you have read any John Grisham novels, you might recognize the pattern of the down-and-out lawyer wracked by self-loathing who redeems himself by winning an impossible case for a just cause. If you are, you might recognize the spoiled, self-indulgent man-boy protagonist who suffers a crisis that pushes him to mature out of his prolonged puberty into full manhood.
Did I enjoy reading Involuntary Witness? Yes, I did, mainly because of the Italian cultural setting and because of the humor in the book. I had a few reservations which are explained in my full review. Please read my see my full and illustrated review of the first book in this series on my Italophile Book Reviews site. From the first book's description: Inspector Bordelli is one of the few policemen left in the deserted city. He spends his days on routine work, and his nights tormented by the heat and mosquitoes. Suddenly one night, a telephone call gives him a new sense of purpose: The old woman is lying on her bed - apparently killed by an asthma attack, though her medicine has been left untouched.
With the help of his young protege, the victim's eccentric brother, and a semi-retired petty thief, the inspector begins a murder investigation. A Cozy Giallo by Candida Martinelli. Candida has written a traditional country-house cozy-murder-mystery with lovely Tuscan sights, hunky Italian love interests, mysteries, laughs and tugs on the heartstrings. It is in the style of Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy L. Sayers mystery novels, a light touch with little gore or violence, lots of suspect characters and a bit of romance.
The reader follows Julie along her not-always-smooth path to discover all she can about the possible suspects and motives for the murder. There is some danger for Julie, and for the others involved in the case. The resolution brings clarity and relief, as well as a new beginning for Julie, in Italy. To read Part I of 8 Parts which is 6 Chapters of 40 Chapters , visit the book's page on this website or at the book's website. It is available from Amazon. The Kindle Version is available from Amazon.
Also see my pages: Thrillers Set in Italy.
There is a website dedicated to mysteries set in Italy. It is not the easiest site to navigate. But it has some nice interviews with the authors. Ruggiero Girolamo Diane A. The books in the series are to date: The main staircase of Ca' Rezzonico.
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The canal-level entrance to the Grand Canal palace Ca' Rezzonico. Those views are unpleasant, to say the least, concerning: Roma or Rom, southern Italians, Milanese, people who believe in God, Germans, tourists, people with cosmetic surgery, French, housewives, Chinese immigrants eastern Europeans, animal welfare people, business people, people with weight problems, journalists, and most especially, U. These are the books in the Poisoner Mystery series so far: As the series progresses, the author seems to leave his protagonist, Nic Costa, behind.
Nic feels like just one of the many characters in the books, rather than the one for whom we might want to root, or feel some sympathy. That varies from book to book. Nic Costa Series books in order of publication: These are the books in the series so far all available as Kindle books: See what you think: Here is a quote from their reviews: Stuckart's Leonardo Da Vinci From the description of the first book in this series: There are eight books in the series: There are four books in The Kissed in Italy Series series: The books in the Temptation in Florence Series: I have read, and enjoyed, all three books in The Mina's Adventures Series:.
Series Written in English. Beverle Graves Myers and her Tito Amato Interrupted Aria by Beverle Graves Myers This is the first in a series of historical mysteries set in mid-late s Venice featuring an opera singer as the amateur detective. Iain Pears and his Jonathan Argyll Iain Pears writes a series featuring art historian Jonathan Argyll and the woman who becomes his wife during the run of the series, Flavia di Stefano , a member of an Italian police squad that aims to prevent the theft of art from Italy's famous museums, private collections, and churches.
The Lost Daughter Villa Triste. Wooden Leg Ship of Fools coming soon. George Herman's Leonardo da Vinci and Niccolo da Pavia Renaissance Mystery Series A Comedy of Murders by George Herman A Comedy of Murders is a richly researched and richly imagined visit to that amazing time of city-states run by princes, and explorations of our planet and the sciences, and a church more concerned with rich coffers than rich souls, and wars fueled by personal vendettas, and personal vendettas fueled by wars.
Please visit my full, illustrated review at Italophile Book Reviews: There are two books in this series so far: Murder and Marinara 2. The books in the series are: Camilleri website Images from "Il Commissario Montalbano", an Italian series of film-length episodes based on Andrea Camillieri's police procedural novels, several of which have been translated into English.