A Murder in Tuscany

Kent combines rich atmospherics and fully realized characters with a deceptively simple puzzle in her outstanding second mystery featuring Italian PI Sandro Cellini (after 2010's The Drowning River). When the body of Leona Meadows-Mascarello, the director of the Orfeo Trust's "celebrated Creative Arts Program," housed in a Tuscany castle, is found in a ravine near the wreckage of her car, the endearing, self-effacing Cellini investigates what initially appears to be an accidental death, caused by the victim's hitting a patch of ice at high speed. Meanwhile, Cellini and his wife, Luisa, struggle in their childless marriage in the wake of her recovery from breast cancer. Cellini blends the disingenuous cleverness of a Columbo with the world-weary awareness of how things really work of Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti. The sleuth's ingenious detection of evidence pointing toward foul play portends a long and successful series run. Louise Penny fans will find a lot to like. (Aug.)