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Product Description
Product Description
As Sandro gets to grips with the dispiriting realities of life as a private detective, touting for business among old contacts and following errant teenagers, an old case comes back to haunt him...Once the subject of a routine investigation back in Sandro's police-officer days, Loni Meadows - the glamorous, charming and ruthless director of an artistic Foundation based in a castle in the hills outside Florence - is found dead in circumstances Sandro cannot convince himself are accidental. However inconvenient his suspicions might be, both to Sandro - whose marriage appears to be disintegrating - and to Meadows' erstwhile employers at the Foundation, he presses ahead with the case. And as Sandro attempts to uncover the truth of Loni Meadows' violent and lonely death, he finds himself drawn into the lives of the castle's highly strung community and the closed world they inhabit in the Casentino's isolated hills.
About the Author
Christobel Kent's previous books include A Time of Mourning, A Party in San Niccolo, Late Season and A Florentine Revenge. She lives near Cambridge with her husband and five children.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Sandro Cellini is a former policeman turned private investigator. He is finding the transition between the two jobs very difficult. He is involved in following a young girl whose parents think she may be getting into bad company. But his work is not occupying all of Sandro's mind. His wife has announced she is going on a business trip to New York with her lecherous boss, Frollini and Sandro is worried about it.
But it is when Sandro is asked to look into the apparently accidental death of Loni Meadows, the director of a trust which runs a castle in the mountains outside Florence that he thinks his career as a private detective is starting to take off. The book is an atmospheric story with many interesting characters most of whom have a motive for wanting Loni dead - or at least out of the way. Sandro himself is growing as a character and it is clear his knowledge of human beings and his ability to get people to talk to him will be very useful to him in his new profession.
I really enjoyed this book. It is well written in Christobel Kent's trade mark subtle and understated style. Motives are complex and convoluted and hardly anyone is who they seem to be. Florence and the Italian countryside is displayed how tourists rarely see it - in winter with snow on the ground. I recommend it to anyone who wants a more sophisticated crime story without too much violence.
But it is when Sandro is asked to look into the apparently accidental death of Loni Meadows, the director of a trust which runs a castle in the mountains outside Florence that he thinks his career as a private detective is starting to take off. The book is an atmospheric story with many interesting characters most of whom have a motive for wanting Loni dead - or at least out of the way. Sandro himself is growing as a character and it is clear his knowledge of human beings and his ability to get people to talk to him will be very useful to him in his new profession.
I really enjoyed this book. It is well written in Christobel Kent's trade mark subtle and understated style. Motives are complex and convoluted and hardly anyone is who they seem to be. Florence and the Italian countryside is displayed how tourists rarely see it - in winter with snow on the ground. I recommend it to anyone who wants a more sophisticated crime story without too much violence.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A good story and plot. A great description of the areas the characters 'live' in. I knew exactly where everything took place.
I am looking forward to the next book, which I have already bought.
I am looking forward to the next book, which I have already bought.
5 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the second in the Sandro Cellini series after 'A Time of Mourning' ; although the detective is actually introduced in the prequel 'A Florentine Revenge'. The plot has been well summarised by a previous reviewer-so I will confine my comments, briefly, to the characterisation and structure both of which I feel let this novel down. On the positive side Kent clearly has a great facility for inventing and writing about interesting female characters, the real stars of both previous novels i.e. Giuli and Luisa. In 'A Time of Mourning' these characters play a crucial, beguilingly tentative role in the evolution of the plot. Carefully guiding and sometimes orchestrating events, the interplay between his wife Luisa and his adopted sidekick Giuli are skilfully and subtly woven into the momentum of the storyline.This is not the case for most of the the men, including the lead. Sandro Cellini is, I think it is fair to say, quite dull by comparison, which is fair enough, not all main characters have to show the same insight and fortitude as great detectives especially when others step in to help him out. The problem comes when these characters are sidelined in the way they are in this novel; the characterisation of Sandro is shown up for what he essentially is, and it turns out he reallly isn't that interesting. In both novels Sandro and a young woman, in this case Cate, work as two parts of a whole, it's just a pity that a more rounded character couldn't have been fashioned from the sum of their parts. Strangely in this novel Kent also felt the need to eliminate another main player, namely the city of Florence, beautifully evoked in A.Tof M., Florence is ditched early on, just like like Giuli and Luisa, in favour of 'Castle Orfeo'. You know you are in trouble with an author when they keep telling you how 'dark and mysterious' a place is. Just as Sandro only really works in relation to his wife and partner, Orfeo is interesting only because of its proximity to the reflected light of Florence. Likewise 'A Fine and Private Place' is better only because it follows A.T.of M.
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