On the wintry Tuscan coast, the wealthy elite retreat to their lavish holiday homes. But the season turns sinister when a couple vanishes from a locked villa, and the body of a disreputable count washes ashore, bludgeoned to death. With echoes of Agatha Christie and the erudite suspense of Umberto Eco (or it could be White Lotus taking on the Berlusconi era) this richly atmospheric mystery unfolds among an ensemble of eccentrics: a fraudulent aristocrat and his beautiful companion; a melancholic academic and the woman he adores; two elderly single ladies consulting ominous Tarot cards. With the local police floundering, it falls to the brooding Signor Monforti to unravel the mystery, triumphing as an amateur detective.

It begins with a troubling encounter on a flight to Venice. She is a Roman aristocrat and art dealer on the search for undervalued paintings and he a mysterious tour guide. She is invited to cosmopolitan parties by Venetian social and art glitterati. Mr. Silvera, a guide whose erudition and distinction are in sharp contrast with his beat-up suitcase and stain-spotted raincoat, drags his shabby tourists from monument to monument. Their passion will last three days, long enough to be exposed to unscrupulous art dealers and other scammers, passing off worthless paintings as part of a famous collection. Silvera seems to know every language and all secrets. But who is he really? Around them, the canals and lagoons of Venice, a city which becomes a character in the novel in its own right.

Siena, one of Italy's most beautiful cities, is feverishly preparing for the Palio, a horse race dating back to the Middle Ages, held every summer in the centre of the town. Tempers flare, rivalries between the competing neighbourhoods intensify. Milanese lawyer Enzo Maggione and his wife Valeria are unwittingly caught up in the death of a jockey and a maelstrom of plots, counterplots and bribes surrounding the race. What begins as a listless excursion to a medieval equestrian competition turns into a hallucinatory nightmare for Maggione and his wife, awakening their dormant libido, for each other but, more dangerously, for others in their entourage.

On the wintry Tuscan coast, the wealthy elite retreat to their lavish holiday homes. But the season turns sinister when a couple vanishes from a locked villa, and the body of a disreputable count washes ashore, bludgeoned to death. With echoes of Agatha Christie and the erudite suspense of Umberto Eco (or it could be White Lotus taking on the Berlusconi era) this richly atmospheric mystery unfolds among an ensemble of eccentrics: a fraudulent aristocrat and his beautiful companion; a melancholic academic and the woman he adores; two elderly single ladies consulting ominous Tarot cards. With the local police floundering, it falls to the brooding Signor Monforti to unravel the mystery, triumphing as an amateur detective.

It begins with a troubling encounter on a flight to Venice. She is a Roman aristocrat and art dealer on the search for undervalued paintings and he a mysterious tour guide. She is invited to cosmopolitan parties by Venetian social and art glitterati. Mr. Silvera, a guide whose erudition and distinction are in sharp contrast with his beat-up suitcase and stain-spotted raincoat, drags his shabby tourists from monument to monument. Their passion will last three days, long enough to be exposed to unscrupulous art dealers and other scammers, passing off worthless paintings as part of a famous collection. Silvera seems to know every language and all secrets. But who is he really? Around them, the canals and lagoons of Venice, a city which becomes a character in the novel in its own right.

Siena, one of Italy's most beautiful cities, is feverishly preparing for the Palio, a horse race dating back to the Middle Ages, held every summer in the centre of the town. Tempers flare, rivalries between the competing neighbourhoods intensify. Milanese lawyer Enzo Maggione and his wife Valeria are unwittingly caught up in the death of a jockey and a maelstrom of plots, counterplots and bribes surrounding the race. What begins as a listless excursion to a medieval equestrian competition turns into a hallucinatory nightmare for Maggione and his wife, awakening their dormant libido, for each other but, more dangerously, for others in their entourage.