Murder Most Unfortunate: A Rick Montoya Italian Mystery

Wagner’s adequate third mystery featuring translator Rick Montoya (after 2014’s Death in the Dolomites) finds Rick just finishing up a job as an interpreter at a conference in Bassano del Grappa, Italy, devoted to native artist Jacopo da Bassano. When someone fatally dispatches professor Lorenzo Fortuna, the conference’s most prominent participant, Rick believes Fortuna’s murder is linked to a pair of lost Jacopo paintings, which disappeared during the chaos in northern Italy toward the end of WWII. After cozying up to the police, Rick persuades Betta Innocenti, the gorgeous daughter of a local art dealer, to help him investigate. The many suspects range from Italians—a curator, a seminar panelist, a banker—to foreigner scholars. A second murder raises the stakes. A subplot involving Rick’s Italian ex-girlfriend, Erica Pedana, stretches out the already thin narrative. Wagner does a better job of showcasing the beauty of Bassano than he does constructing an effective whodunit. (Nov.)