The Dead Season - Tapa dura

Cellini is a fascinating character, morose yet strong, suited for far more than the surveillance of a teen girl, his current job, but he brings his all to it. Kent delivers an ingenious country-house mystery here, complete with Agatha Christie byplay among the clashing characters and spiked by the acerbic, witty presence of Cellini.

I loved this book and hated putting it down. It manages to be both a taut thriller and a beautifully observed story of a young woman's coming-of-age set in a Florence in full flood. Michael Dibdin meets Muriel Spark.--Allison Pearson, author of I Don't Know How She Does It

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 . . .